


From Eden

by sweetfayetanner



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Battle Couple, Biblical References, Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Demons, Evil Power Couple, F/M, Magic, Murder, Occult, Soul Bond, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-07-17 13:17:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16096439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetfayetanner/pseuds/sweetfayetanner
Summary: Langdon had been here for little more than a day, but the hypnotic, precise cadence of his boots against the polished floors was unmistakable.Truthfully, she didn’t know whether to be horrified or in awe of him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not one for writing second person POV; this is a nameless, faceless OC instead. I was so fascinated by Michael Langdon that I had to write something with him. And he's pretty, so this is entirely a self indulgent character study. I'm not sure where this fic is going to go, but we'll see how the season progresses. The title is based on the same song by Hozier.

She was in the library, alone, when she heard his footsteps.

She knew it was him. It couldn’t be anyone else but _him_. He’d been here for little more than a day, but the hypnotic, precise cadence of his boots against the polished floors was unmistakable. Eighteen months of relative solitude, never knowing whether it was day or night—not that it mattered much anymore now that the Earth had become a ruined wasteland—had given her plenty of time to parse the sounds of Outpost 3. The whisper of the Grays, floating along balconies and down the narrow, sleek corridors like apparitions. The insistent tap of Ms. Venable’s cane as if it were a ticking clock, a warning, a threat. Ms. Mead’s practiced rhythm, heavy and quick, past their doors like some nocturnal predator on the hunt for a kill.

The other Purples were shuffling steps and clinking glasses, a crescendo of voices that echoed across the labyrinth of their underground shelter. They were all energy and rage with nowhere to run, so it slipped out into the quiet halls and rooms, an explosion of frayed nerves and short tempers.

Eighteen months had been a lifetime. It didn’t feel like surviving. It felt like a prison sentence, a slow and endless march on cracked glass wondering when it would break and where they would fall. That same restless anger had burned in her veins, too. Those nights where she lay awake listening to the crackle of the fire until it finally lulled her to sleep. Days when she couldn’t summon enough willpower to do anything but lock the door to her suite and cry until her chest ached. She found that it was easier to keep quiet, to bury the pain somewhere else when she wasn’t alone. Obey the rules, however ridiculous they were. Remain invisible and non-threatening.  

She’d been used to not drawing attention. She could’ve been a Gray, she thought, if fate were different. But she didn’t really know a damn thing about fate; nothing seemed to make sense anymore, so did it matter? Her parents had immediately pooled their funds, no questions asked. One hundred million dollars, she’d find out after the fact. She didn’t even know they’d had that much. And she didn’t have time to consider what it all meant, didn’t particularly give a fuck about being a part of the elite—she felt more like an imposter. Some outsider with enough luck to be born to parents who built their wealth, however meager it had been compared to the others, from the ground up.

The bare minimum of social interaction had gotten her this far at least. Amiable conversations traded across the table while they choked down their tasteless meal. A hushed exchange of words in a shadowed corridor with a passing Gray. Obligatory grumbling over the songs that broke through the static on relentless, agonizing loops, a ghostly thread to the world before all of this. Just enough to play whatever game they were trapped in and survive one more day, one more week, one more month.

Nothing was permanent here, and the last thing she wanted was to become entangled in their drama and end up on the outside. Left to the ravaged Earth as the radiation poisoned her body and the toxic air squeezed the breath from her lungs. Put down like some dying animal, the cold barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her head. Her parents didn’t sacrifice every last cent they’d owned for her to just fuck up her chances because of some dumbass mistake.

It was easier to be alone. The library wasn’t empty that often, but when the occasion arose, she took it. There was a shred of peace here. The faint scent of smoke mingled with the clean aroma of linen and beeswax from the candles. The spines of the books crammed in the shelves flickered back at her as golden light wavered over them. She’d tucked herself into a corner of one of the black leather couches, her knees drawn up under her gown. It was some kind of eighteenth century-inspired monstrosity in a deep shade of violet; she thought it might have been prettier if there weren’t so many ruffles. Lace dripped from the satin sleeves at her elbows. Her wardrobe was full of it—lace and voluminous layers of fabric, pleated and gathered into elegant styles from another time. She gave them credit for committing to the aesthetic. After a year and some months, it was beginning to grow on her.

Her mind had stayed occupied with help from the Outpost’s library. She had discovered early on that the shelves held an extensive collection of essential literary works. She’d almost expected them to be nothing but a decoration, an illusion of comfort. She read them slowly, savoring each page, each word, not knowing how long they would need to last. Before the world went straight to hell she’d been a year shy of graduation. Hunkering down in a room full of books felt familiar, as though she was back in the library on her manicured university campus studying for finals. As if this was normal for just a little while. As if their sequestered world wasn’t the only fucking thing left.

She turned a page, partially aware that she didn’t remember what she’d read in the past few minutes. Her focus was gone, the words turning into incomprehensible smudges of ink across the paper. His footsteps matched her pulse until all she could hear was the blood rushing through her ears. And then suddenly he was there in the threshold—she caught him on the edge of her periphery, a silent shadow. She stared at the book in her lap but the words still didn’t make sense and the awareness of him prickled along her spine.

Langdon terrified and fascinated her in equal measure. He was an abyss—dark, cold, offering nothing but vague notions of an imagined paradise. A safe haven they would have to compete for. Who was he, exactly, to determine whether they were worthy? It made her uneasy to know that he was the deciding factor, that he could leave her here to whatever horrors awaited them outside without knowing why. What deemed a person useful to The Cooperative? Was what he’d said about this sanctuary true, or just a load of bullshit?

“Loneliness is a comfort to you, not a burden.” Langdon’s voice filled the room, smooth and rich as dark honey.

It hadn’t been a question, but of course he was well aware of the truth already. She had seen a couple of the other Purples walk away from their encounters with him shell-shocked and trembling, hysterical about how he’d rifled through the parts of them they wanted to keep hidden. Their private thoughts and shameful secrets were little more than pawns in a game to him. He appeared to relish pulling them apart and leaving them shattered. She’d never seen Coco so quiet, her eyes wide and red-rimmed before she excused herself to her room for the rest of the evening.

Truthfully, she didn’t know whether to be horrified or in awe of him.

The book snapped shut. “I’m used to it,” she said, looking up at last. He moved with a preternatural grace, hands clasped behind his back as he rounded the couch opposite in a few long strides. “Aside from the Armageddon raging outside, this is just…more of the same. More minimalist, maybe, but…I’m used to being on my own.”

She figured it would be best to strive for honesty. She just hoped that she could keep the fear out of her voice.

He seemed to draw the shadows to him, and she couldn’t tell whether there’d been the barest hint of a smirk somewhere on his lips. The light from the fireplace made the lines of his cheekbones sharper, the color of his eyes darker. But she knew they weren’t dark at all—they were the brightest, clearest shade of blue she’d ever seen. Like ice from the glaciers that no longer existed.

Langdon’s lithe form melted into the arm of the couch opposite in such a fluid motion that she couldn’t tear her gaze away. He perched on the edge, cat-like, and crossed one leg over the other. Almost instinctively, she pushed the book aside, unfurling swathes of fabric as she inched closer to the edge of the leather cushion.

“Not so impressed with the other residents, then, I take it.”

She lifted one shoulder. “A bunch of entitled assholes don’t really strike me as the best candidates to keep humanity from dying out. If they’re all that’s left…” she shook her head, “I don’t know. I don’t. Aside from whatever… _visionaries_ you’ve got at The Cooperative, and maybe those kids, humanity’s kinda screwed.” She sighed. “It’s unfair, I guess, that we bought our survival. We didn’t really survive at all, we just had the means to escape. And these people…they don’t know how to do much for themselves. How can the world depend on them?”

“Without them, the outposts wouldn’t exist. Their money—your money—”

“My parents’ money,” she corrected.

“None of you would be here if it weren’t for their wealth.” Langdon’s head titled to the side, amused. “You don’t consider yourself one of them?”

“My parents could afford my place here, I can’t deny that,” she said. “But I…” She couldn’t look at his demanding gaze, instead averting her eyes to where his hands rested on top of his knee. Slender, well-manicured fingers drummed absently on his kneecap, the opaque rings and jewels glinting in the light. “I know a thing or two about hardship, Mr. Langdon. I remember what it was like before.”

She didn’t mean the end of the world. No, it had been long before that, and Langdon knew it—she could see it in his face, those micro expressions that were gone the moment they appeared.

He leaned forward slightly. The light changed his face in remarkable ways, she realized; where before there had been something almost imperceptibly sinister about his features, now the candlelight had softened the harsh lines of shadow.

“Of course. There was a time when your family had to worry about money. It disappeared faster than you could earn it,” he answered. She didn’t dare to ask how he knew. Then again, it wasn’t altogether unreasonable to expect that The Cooperative might’ve done ridiculously detailed background checks. “Does that make you envious of them? That they were born into wealth? That they’ve…enjoyed it longer?”

“No.”

His lips curved into a delicate smirk. “You sound so sure of yourself,” Langdon said. “Why?”

“You think I’m lying.”

“Oh, I’d know if you were, and believe me, I’d tell you,” Langdon replied, his tone light and almost teasing. “No…I want to know _why_. It’s a simple question.”

“It gives me an advantage,” she answered. “These people are used to their cushy lives and it made them complacent. I never knew mine long enough to get to that point. I don’t envy them for one second.”

“Ruthless.” His smirk broadened into a grin, and her stomach did a somersault in response. “I admire that.”

“Don’t know if I’d call it that,” she countered.

“I would.” He narrowed those clear blue eyes, a look so piercing that she shifted in her seat, rearranging her skirts to try and avoid it.

“It’s just surviving. Figuring out who you’re up against.”

“You see them as opponents?”

“Sometimes.” She gathered the book from where it had fallen between the cushions and stood, tucking it against her chest, very aware of his gaze following her every movement. “People don’t last long here with the way Mead and Venable run things. All we can do is try to keep up. I’ve stayed quiet…done everything I can to mitigate the risk of being a problem for them.”

“And you’d do anything to make sure you’re not abandoned. Not again.” The way he said it, drawing out every syllable, made a knot form in the pit of her stomach. How could he have known something so personal? “No matter what it might cost you. Even if the price was your soul.”

One of her eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

Langdon tipped his head to the side again, his strawberry blond hair falling across one shoulder. “On the contrary, I think you know _exactly_ what I mean.” He pushed off the arm of the couch to stand, lacing his fingers together in front of him.

“You have that spark of callousness within you—I can see it. It’s an ugly thing, but it’s there, because it’s a part of you. It’s _always_ been a part of you. And you’d do whatever you need to with it, if it meant your salvation. Even if it left blood on your hands.”

The lilting, pleasant timbre of his voice suddenly turned to ice, that air of superiority and omnipotent power returning to lace his words. A storm gathered in his eyes and beneath his skin, something malicious that she’d suspected lurked in his veins, down to every fiber of his being. She didn’t know what it was about him. Part of her didn’t want to know, really, but a stubborn thread of curiosity still lingered.

She found herself gaping at him, mouth open, a coherent reply lost to the void. “I…I don’t know.”

Langdon closed his eyes, just for a moment. “Yes, you do.”

When he opened them again, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, dropping his arms to his sides. She watched the mesmerizing fluidity of his hands, the rigid way he carried himself. The same sense of amusement came crawling back as if there hadn’t ever been something terribly malicious in him in the first place. As if her trampling over the corpses of Outpost 3’s elite to garner her place at The Sanctuary was a topic of casual conversation.

Langdon continued to speak with his hands. “You can deny that part of you if that’s what you want, but it will find you eventually. Once chaos has taken over, you really can’t be sure what you’d be capable of, can you?”

“…I guess not.”

She turned away from him, the admission uncoiling something dark within her, though she didn’t want to acknowledge it. Her fingertips dug into the cover of the book until her knuckles blanched. This time, it was her footsteps that ricocheted off the walls, the staccato notes far too loud in her ears.

She felt the weight of his gaze down her back, but when she glanced over her shoulder he was already gone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of the kudos and comments! I'm trying to line up the chapters with the episodes in the show as much as I can.

She’d been listening to the steady drip of water hitting the tiles for at least a half hour now, though time didn’t matter much anymore to her, not here. The haze of steam that had filled the room and wrapped her body in its warmth had long since disappeared. She sat on the floor of the shower, her back pressed to the freezing tile, her arms hugging her knees, as the air chilled and goosebumps rose along her skin. Droplets rolled down her back from the strands of wet hair plastered to her shoulders, and she shivered absently, half aware of the cold but too distant to do anything to remedy it.

 _It’s_ always _been a part of you._

_…it will find you eventually._

_And you’d do anything to make sure you’re not abandoned. Not again._

Langdon’s voice filled up her thoughts, haunting her hours and hours later. She couldn’t shake him from her mind, couldn’t stop pulling apart what he’d said to her on a relentless loop. Eighteen months and he’d been the first person in this godforsaken bunker to _see_ her. Maybe part of that had been her fault—she’d kept everyone else at arm’s length in an act of self-preservation, but something about him had compelled her to confess, to bear fragments of herself that she’d tried to ignore. What was it? How could a stranger make the words fall from her tongue so easily? It surprised her, even now, that she’d kept her own fear restrained enough to speak with him like that. Langdon—or maybe the impression of him; brooding, emotionless—had scared the shit out of her. She didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of him digging through her soul, chipping away pieces where he saw fit.

But there was still that infuriating part of her that regarded him with a strange reverence. And she couldn’t explain it, not yet. The weight of Langdon’s presence, standing in front of him, it had been unlike anything she’d felt before. It was terrifying. It thrilled her, too, though she wasn’t ready to concede that. It was like he’d made something come alive in her veins with a mere glance, a tilt of his head. They hadn’t even touched—she hadn’t dared to get close enough for that—but she still felt him on her skin, in her blood, breathing deep into the shadows of her soul.

Langdon had stared right into her and found something familiar.

And what he’d said couldn’t have possibly been obtained from whatever paperwork The Cooperative had on her.

A loud, persistent knocking wrenched her from her thoughts. Someone called her name from the other side of the door.

“We keep a schedule for a reason,” Ms. Venable said. Her exasperation permeated the room. “You know I don’t tolerate lateness.”

She exhaled. “Sorry,” she called back, “I had a headache. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

“Don’t make this a habit,” Ms. Venable warned.

“I won’t.”

Once she heard the slow drumbeat of Venable’s cane fade and the door to her suite click shut, she dragged herself up from the floor of the shower. She knew Venable kept her neurotic schedule and all of her strict rules to maintain order. To give them a life—though that seemed too generous a term for what they had here—full of structure leftover from the old world. It helped some more than others; it’d helped her once or twice when the isolation became too much to handle. It gave the illusion of normalcy. And illusion was all the mind needed sometimes. But now, over a year later, it had started to wear on them in varying degrees.

She was sure that Emily and Tim’s poorly kept secret romance would backfire sooner rather than later. The amount of bickering among the group had escalated to critical levels within the past few weeks, at least by her own estimation. How much more of this could they possibly take? She didn’t know if whatever Langdon offered was true or just a ruse, but at this point she’d consider anything else just to get the fuck away from most of these people. She couldn’t tolerate another afternoon of idle chatter, another dinner spent watching them tear at each other’s throats and obliterating Venable’s fine china and crystal glasses.

A bitter gust of air doused her skin the moment she stepped out of the bathroom. She left a trail of water behind her, not bothering to towel off, hoping the cold that stung her bare body would smack some kind of sense back into her. Or at the very least, help steel her for the night ahead. She dressed as quickly as she could, acutely aware of Venable’s lack of patience for disrupting order.

The nineteenth century-inspired dress she chose for tonight was blissfully free from the abundant lace that plagued most of her wardrobe. A gorgeous shade of lavender, it had full layers of cascading ball gown skirts and an off-the-shoulder neckline. A tiny pattern of crystals adorned the bodice, sparkling under the light of the candles in her room.

Her hair was still damp when she joined the table for dinner, but she’d at least pinned it up into an adequate style, though she was sure Gallant would say otherwise. She wilted a bit under the gaze of Venable and Mead and the rest of the outpost residents, guilty for being the one to hold up their meal. Not that it was anything to look forward to, especially with rations dwindling by the week. She didn’t think the Purples were irritated with her, per se, but she’d become so accustomed to flying under their radar. She shifted in her chair, rearranging her napkin and utensils, waiting for their attention to drift away from her. Thankfully, it didn’t last long; the hum of conversation picked up again, plates and forks scraping as they forced down yet another tasteless cube.

Venable’s unflinching gaze caught her like a helpless insect in a spider’s web from the opposite end of the table. She looked away first, scooping up her fork.

“Are you okay?” Emily whispered from her right, leaning closer. She lifted an eyebrow. “Venable looks like she wants to murder you.”

She poked at the beige cube in the center of her plate. “I’ll live,” she answered. “If only out of spite.”

Emily suppressed a giggle, turning her face into her shoulder to avoid Venable’s hawk-like eyes. She stabbed the gelatinous cube with her fork. “Did Langdon say anything to you yet?”

“No,” she answered. “Not yet.”

The rest of the evening passed as it usually did, the group of them gathered in the library ruminating over their current situation, trading stories about the way things used to be. There was a hush of nervous energy among them all, a quiet worry about the newest occupant of Outpost 3 and what it would mean for their continued survival. Like everyone else, she didn’t know what her chances were. During their brief encounter, Langdon hadn’t given any hints one way or another, only regarding her with the sort of amusement that she couldn’t exactly read.

Gallant and his grandmother provided the evening’s entertainment in dramatic fashion as only the two of them knew how. She shrunk into the corner of the couch, exchanging furtive glances between Emily and Andre while Gallant sparred against Evie, the flurry of quick-witted barbs charging the room with an awkward tension. She could nearly feel the explosion of rage crackling in the air like the wind before a thunderstorm. When at last the aftershocks of their shouting match started to weaken—Evie wearing a haughty expression as if it were a piece of lavish jewelry, an art so refined from her days of Hollywood glamour that it was almost impressive—they moseyed on back to their private rooms for the night.

The rest of the Purples wandered off at intervals after that. Emily and Tim laced their fingers together the moment they crossed into the hallway, as if no one would notice. Coco left in a huff muttering about her own soul-crushing boredom, Mallory obediently at her heels. Andre and Dinah were the last to go, yawning and stretching, bidding her goodnight before their voices drifted down the corridor. She sighed and unclenched her teeth, finally able to release the tension that had worked itself into her jaw from the Gallant incident.

Her skirts rustled around her ankles as she approached the bookshelves. Fingertips skirting along the titles that glittered on the spines, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth in consideration. She’d finished the book from last night before she’d showered, amazed at her own level of focus. She’d made notes, too; scribbles across notebook paper that were now relics from the old world only because she had some of her college belongings when the alarm went off.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Langdon’s slow, lilting voice mused from somewhere behind her back. “A creature of habit, even now at the end of the world.”

She hadn’t heard his footsteps this time.

“Can’t help it, I guess,” she answered, still inspecting the titles. “It keeps me busy—keeps me from getting depressed about the old world, if I try hard enough. Anything’s better than listening to Coco whine about how much she misses sushi.”

That earned her a low, wry laugh, which made something flutter in the pit of her stomach.

She abandoned the thought of choosing a book and turned on her heel to find him. Langdon stood a few feet away, his hands clasped behind his back, half of his face bathed in golden light. The long black coat lined with buttons had disappeared, but he was still dressed in elegant black from neck to foot. He cut an imposing figure in his tailored clothes: slender, tall, and not a single hair out of place. She kind of hated herself for how captivated she was, how the fear that had gripped her before was beginning to fade.

“You were a college student—an English major,” he recalled.

She nodded. “Would’ve earned my degree if the world hadn’t been nuked.”

“With highest honors,” Langdon said, lifting his chin. “You were an exceptional scholar…not that anyone cared enough to notice. Apart from your professors, of course. Do you miss it?”

She studied the shadows on the floor, thrown by the way he spoke about her life in the old world. Langdon knew intimate details—her feelings, her insecurities—that would have never been of any interest to The Cooperative’s files. At least, she thought so.

“I don’t know,” she breathed. Slow, calculated footsteps brought him closer to her. “Maybe some of it. I enjoyed the learning part of college, not so much the stress and cramming for finals and term papers. It’s a shitty thing to say, but I’m relieved.”

Langdon narrowed his gaze. “In what way?”

“I don’t have to participate in a lifestyle that was never going to make me happy, or satisfy me,” she admitted. “There’s nothing left of that world now…and yeah, there’s always going to be parts of it I’ll miss, but I’m not exactly opposed to a clean slate. Provided your assessment of me goes well.”

She thought she saw that smirk again, just for the briefest of moments. Langdon brought one of his hands up and swiped his thumb along his chin. “Your parents,” he said evenly. “Does it upset you that they aren’t here to share this…new beginning?”

It felt like a stone had dropped into her stomach, a lead weight crushing her chest. The words dried up on her tongue.

“They sacrificed everything for me,” she answered, though her voice wavered. “Their lives, their money. I’m only here because they aren’t.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Langdon countered. His voice rose a little, demanding more from her. She swore the temperature in the room plummeted a few degrees. “Does the guilt of their deaths eat away at you?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie,” he warned. The command pierced like the edge of a knife. “I know you’re not being honest with me.”

She felt the emotion welling up inside her, burning the back of her throat and prickling behind her eyes. She forced it to stay where it was, but her vision still blurred as the tears came dangerously close to sliding down her cheeks. The hardcover spines on the bookshelf pressed into the small of her back through layers of fabric, and she braced her hands on the wooden shelves just to have something to hold onto. Langdon covered the remaining distance between them until his boots brushed against her skirts. The warmth from his body enveloped her own—she figured his touch would be cold like the undercurrent of his voice, but instead he radiated heat.

“They’re _my parents_ ,” she reasoned.

She bit into her bottom lip to keep it from trembling and tasted blood on her tongue. Langdon cocked his head to the side, inhaling as if he could smell it. One long finger reached out to trace down her bottom lip before he took her chin in a surprisingly delicate hold. His hands were much softer than she imagined. Clear blue eyes searched her own; unlike the solid presence of his body in front of her, they were pure ice.

“It’s a very convincing story you’ve sold these people,” he said. “A loving daughter tormented by the guilt of her self-sacrificing parents, who built an empire only to destroy it all to save their only child.” He let go of her chin, but kept two fingers hovering beneath her jaw.

“A noble end for two of the least deserving people on this godforsaken Earth. You were far too kind to their memory,” he continued. “I can see the truth—I have a certain talent for it: staring right into the darkest parts of you that you can’t run from. There’s no reason to lie anymore.” He grinned, and his eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “It wasn’t guilt you felt when they died and you survived. You were _relieved_. They got what they deserved, didn’t they?”

Her voice broke. “…Yes.”

Langdon’s grin widened, pleased. “You were nothing but a mere afterthought in their lives. An accident they didn’t plan for—of course they never dared to say that in front of you. No…but somehow…you already _knew_.”

When a sob finally broke free from her throat, he brushed his knuckles across her cheek, then cradled her face in his hand. She shivered at his touch but found herself leaning closer into the warmth of his insistent hold.

“They were selfish, neglectful, and it only got worse once they had enough money to stop worrying. You _hated_ them. All of that fucking rage burned in your veins for so long, tearing you apart until you figured out what to do with it.”

She closed her eyes. A few tears slipped down her cheeks, but he wiped them away with his thumb. The gesture, a simple, fleeting thing, surprised her.

“Your parents didn’t die when the bombs went off.” Langdon’s face was now inches from hers, his breath tickling her collarbone, his voice just barely above a whisper. “I know the truth, I just want to hear you say it.”

She exhaled a ragged breath. “I killed them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And we're on our way to Evil Power Couple status. Thanks again for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I was busy and this chapter ended up being 2x longer than I planned. Thank you SO MUCH for all of the kudos and lovely comments and support. They're incredibly helpful. :)

Once the confession pierced the quiet of the library, the weight that had crushed her lungs no longer held her prisoner. She could breathe without feeling like barbed wire had coiled around her ribcage and a stone had sunk into the bottom of her stomach; she could stop carrying it all and letting it tear her apart from the inside. She could breathe, and cry, and just _be_. Warm tears slipped down her cheeks and she was powerless to stop them. She slid down the bookcase until she fell to her knees on the floor, layers of skirts pooling around her. The muscles in her abdomen ached from the force of her weeping—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried like this, and she was almost embarrassed.

She’d nearly forgotten about Langdon. He lowered to his knees in front of her, a silent, dark figure lost somewhere in the tears that obscured her vision. Though she couldn’t see him, she felt his presence like an anchor: the press of his knee against hers, caught up in her skirts, the warmth of his hand as he uncurled her fingers from the lavender fabric and smoothed her knuckles until they were no longer taut. Langdon waited for her sobbing to slow, waited for her to find the right words again.

The rich notes of his cologne engulfed her senses. He’d taken one of her hands in between his own, and when she finally blinked the last of her tears away, sniffling, she found him studying her with an unreadable expression. There was something in his eyes she couldn’t place, long gone before she could even put a name to it.

“I’ve never…” she took another breath, sniffling, “I’ve never said that aloud before. To anyone.”

“It was a burden on your soul,” Langdon agreed. “But there’s no guilt to be found, no remorse to consume you. Just the weight of an unshared secret. Do you feel lighter now?”

“I feel free.” She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks flushed from crying. “I had to bury it for so long…I’d forgotten what it was like to feel that again. Like I’m starting to become myself—not the person I created when I came here.”

Langdon angled his chin upward in what she assumed was approval. “Good.”

“The Cooperative couldn’t have known the truth.” She immediately wondered if maybe they had, somehow. She knew nothing about them; only that her escape from a nuclear winter had come with a hefty price tag. “So how did _you_? And don’t bullshit me…all that stuff about my parents being insufferable assholes was never anywhere in my files.”

“I recognized the darkness in you,” he said, as if that answered her questions. Langdon didn’t seem interested in giving up his own secrets, and she was sure he had more than she ever did. “As I made clear before, I have a natural talent for seeing people as they truly are…the worst parts of them.” He stared down at their hands, his own still wrapped around hers, his rings lightly digging into her skin. “I know the soul of someone who’s had blood on their hands when I see it.”

“Because you’re staring into a mirror.”

“Is that what you think?” He laughed, and she couldn’t tell if he got enjoyment out of the idea or if it’d been sarcastic. Langdon leaned forward slightly, the golden glow of the candles nearby finding the red dusted in the corners of his eyes. “That you and I are the same?”

“I don’t know.” It sounded ridiculous. And yet… There was a tiny flicker of something that she still didn’t have the words for. A feeling buried deep. And Langdon was still so impossible to read, a fathomless black hole.

But _something_ had drawn her to him.

“Would it frighten you if we were?”

“…No.”

“Why?”

“I know who I was before I came to the outpost,” she explained. “I already know what I’m capable of, you’re just the first person to see it. You said it yourself, Mr. Langdon: I don’t have to lie anymore. The only way you’d be able to find the darkness in me is if you possessed it yourself.”

Langdon smirked. “And so I would.”

He let go of her hand, and she immediately missed the warmth of his fingers enveloping her own. Her mouth dropped open a little, caught off guard by what she assumed had been the closest to a confession that she’d get from him. It stunned her that he’d given away a piece of himself hidden beneath all of that ethereal magnetism. She didn’t feel like she’d earned it, didn’t feel worthy of it. But she had no trouble believing Langdon had spilled blood in his past. The moment he’d introduced himself to the denizens of Outpost 3, she’d felt the danger lurking inside him, trailing his footsteps, cloaking him like some dark halo.

Maybe he was right, then. Killers always knew their kindred spirits.

“No more secrets. You’re right—you don’t have to hide, not from me. Never from me.” Langdon held her in his gaze, his voice laced with a softness she didn’t know he could possess. “Tell me, then…how did you kill your parents?”

“I don’t see why that’s important.”

“We’ve come all this way and you still want to deny that part of you,” Langdon said. He let his eyes flutter closed for a moment, and she noticed the creases form between his brows. He was frustrated, but his voice never rose. “Are you that ashamed of it?”

Her eyes grew wide. She pushed herself up a little on her knees, craning her neck to scan every doorway, every corridor hidden in shadow.

“No one will hear us,” Langdon assured. “Tell me who you really are.”

She rested back on her legs, shifting the layers of fabric spilled across her lap. Langdon tucked one knee to the floor, the other bent upward to his chest. He settled one arm across his knee, his fingers dangling, fidgeting absently. Her mind was racing too much to comprehend how close they were, how casual this whole thing seemed.

“When the world started going to shit…when I saw the price tag for a spot with The Cooperative, I knew that if the worst case scenario were to happen, my parents would think they were doing me some kind of favor—like it would be better for all of us to go out together in some fiery inferno or whatever. They’d never consider anything else. Never spend everything they had to save me.” She sniffled, trying to keep the tears away and her voice steady. It was stupid; she didn’t know why it still hurt. Langdon tilted his head, listening.

“I didn’t deserve that, you know? Not after years of being raised by other people because they were too self-interested to take responsibility for me.” She sighed. “I never said a word. It didn’t seem worth it. Wouldn’t have changed anything.” She cast her eyes to the lavender hills and valleys in the fabric of her skirts. “All of that money they’d earned was only ever enough for one spot. Just the one. And for the first time, I decided to be selfish…see what it felt like. I didn’t need them to survive, I just needed everything they’d neglected me for.”

“The police report said it was carbon monoxide—I told them I was in class, and they all said how lucky I’d been. What a tragic loss I’d suffered.” When she found Langdon’s face again, the corner of his lips showed the hint of crooked smile. “I killed them with a flick of my wrist, a curl of my fingers. I never spilled a drop of blood. Never broke a bone in their bodies. I just wanted it to happen…so it did.”

Her voice wavered at last, not for what she’d done, but _how_ she’d managed it. The power thrumming in her veins. The power that had come to her seemingly without reason.

“All of that rage burning inside of you,” Langdon said. “You finally understood all that you could do with it, what sort of power it would give you.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Her voice broke again, and she wiped away a tear with the edge of her thumb before it had the chance to fall.

She looked at him, pleading silently, hoping he would have all the answers for the confusion in her heart. Months and months of hiding down here, keeping her abilities dormant, aching with the need to flex them and wondering if anyone else existed like her in the world outside anymore. She understood, now, why he’d elicited such a visceral reaction from her; there was power in his veins, too.

“Nothing.”

Langdon settled onto both knees in front of her again, shaking his head as he took her face between his hands. His thumbs swept along the curves of her cheeks, and he stared at her as if considering the idea that she might’ve been broken in some way had personally wounded him. She’d been wrong about him before—he wasn’t emotionless at all, he just kept them closely guarded.

“They hurt you, and they were never going to stop hurting you. You were defending yourself,” he continued. “This power within you…it’s a _gift_. The darkness found you when you needed it most, and you embraced it. Don’t be afraid.” He gave her a slow, beaming grin. “You’re not alone anymore.”

“How long have you known about me?”

He let go of her just when she’d started to become lulled by the hypnotic press of his fingertips along her tear-stained cheeks.

Langdon pulled himself to his full height. “Long enough.”

She stared up at him, frowning. “You could’ve just said _that’s classified_.”

That smirk of his reappeared, along with a hint of smugness, as he extended one well-manicured hand to help her up from the floor. She took it, rising to her feet, her skirts cascading back into their proper place. He kept a hand at the small of her back, the other outstretched toward the bookcases. After a graceful flicker of his fingers, she saw a book come loose from one of the higher shelves and float across the room until it came to rest just within her own reach. She gasped, gathering it out of the air from where it hovered, smoothing her palm across the beautiful leather hardcover. The raised silver letters sparkled under her curious fingertips.

She laughed. “ _The Last Man_ by Mary Shelley.” She flipped through the pages. “I read a lot of her work when I was in high school.” The book snapped shut. She turned to face Langdon and fixed him with a pointed stare. “I found books on divination in here—books in Latin…spells, maybe. Venable said this place used to be a school.”

No one else had taken much interest in the library’s contents, but she’d found them fascinating, especially those otherworldly texts. There was still a spell book tucked into a drawer in her private suite; she’d nearly been tempted to try the words aloud.

Langdon’s footsteps echoed as he moved away from her and toward the dining room. She trailed behind him, still hugging the book to her chest.

“That was years ago,” he conceded.

“For…magic,” she guessed. The word resonated, surrounding them; she’d never dared to say it aloud, much like her darkest confession. She didn’t know if the power that resided within her qualified as such. “Were you a student here? Before?”

He didn’t offer an answer, so she didn’t pursue it, though she wanted to. They came to a halt at one end of the long, sleek dining room table where the glasses, plates, and silverware had already been laid out for their next meal. The fireplace crackled at the opposite end, illuminating empty wine glasses that would only ever hold water.

Langdon folded his arms behind his back, soldier-esque. “It’s time you embraced your powers again,” he told her. “There’s no reason to let them languish now—it’s not good for you to lock away that most vital part you. And…you might find yourself in need of them.”

“I didn’t want to risk it.”

“You were protecting yourself,” Langdon agreed. “But it’s time to come out of hiding.”

It seemed dangerous to expose her abilities out here in the open, but he’d assured her before that no one would discover them. The halls and rooms were quiet. There wasn’t anyone else to share in her secret except for him.

She left the book on the tabletop, then stepped back, taking in a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, she closed her eyes—it had been a while since she’d done this, and she’d never had an audience that lived to tell about it. To say that her abilities might’ve been a bit rusty was an understatement; even though she’d been tempted to use them over the past eighteen months, she hadn’t given in. Her hands shook when she lifted them, stretching her palms over the table, conjuring the latent power that had stayed obediently where she’d kept it, waiting inside of her to be released. She let out a sharp breath as she felt it come alive—she never remembered it being this bright, this overwhelming. It coursed through her veins like a second heartbeat, racing, building, charging the air around her with its energy.

The fire in the hearth danced wildly as if disturbed by a gust of wind. Her eyes opened. The utensils and plates and glasses began to rattle, metal scraping against porcelain, crystal pounding a chaotic rhythm against the table. It rose to a crescendo, a low rumble, every glass exploding at her will with one fluid motion of her hands. A million tiny shards caught the light before they rained down in all different directions across the formerly immaculate place settings.

She grinned. “ _That_ was more satisfying than I thought it would be.”

Wrecking Venable’s pristine dinner charade was downright fucking cathartic.

“How did it make you feel?”

“Powerful,” she answered. “Whole.”

“As much as it would please us both,” Langdon had such a smug, crooked smile that she couldn’t help but laugh a little, “we wouldn’t want to leave a mess behind.”

“Right.”

This time her hands didn’t tremble. She skirted her fingertips over the table, hovering as she went, letting the pieces of broken crystal float in the air above the slightly disheveled plates and silverware. When she brought her hands together in one graceful sweep, the pieces resumed their former shape, ringing like wind chimes as they turned back into wine glasses. Another flick of the wrist, and the plates and utensils righted themselves like they’d never been touched. The fire roared to life again, undisturbed by the energy of her power.

She clenched her fists at her sides, her skin still tingling with the rush. “Do I pass?”

Langdon opened his mouth to speak, but the echo of distant voices—shouts and screaming, though she didn’t know exactly where it was coming from—drew their attention to the cavernous open room outside the hall.

“We’ll have to continue this later,” he said.

She moved to grab the book from the tabletop. When she turned around again, Langdon was already gone, no trace of departing footsteps left in his wake. It was almost like he hadn’t been standing there at all.

She went back to her room feeling lighter than she had been in eighteen months.

 

***

 

A shockwave rippled through the outpost the next morning: Evie Gallant had been found dead in her suite by her grandson; she’d passed away in her sleep sometime during the night. She figured this had been the source of the commotion that had ultimately disrupted her interview, since neither Venable nor Mead suggested anything else had been amiss last night. That is, until she stopped by Emily’s room around midday and found Tim draped across her lap as she ran her fingers through his hair. With the door thrown wide open.

“That’s not exactly subtle,” she told them, leaning against the doorframe.

Emily beckoned her inside. “Shut the door.”

She did, and lowered into a chair tucked near the vanity across from the bed. “Okay…what gives?”

“They caught us in bed together last night,” Tim explained. He laced his fingers between Emily’s.

“And the reason you’re both not dead right now is…?”

“Langdon,” Emily said. “He saved both our asses. Tim and I went snooping around yesterday, and you know all those bullshit rules Venable’s been holding over us? Turns out, they’re not even legit. She’s been going rogue this whole time, making shit up just because she could.”

“That woman is something else.”

Emily let out a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

“Can’t wait to get the hell out of here.” Tim sighed. “I mean, if things go well…I don’t know…Langdon’s impossible to read.”

“Did he tell you anything? Make any decisions about The Sanctuary yet?” Emily asked.

“He didn’t say,” she answered. “Never had the chance.”

Venable called a meeting in the library shortly after that, announcing that the entire outpost would celebrate Halloween—weird, because they’d never acknowledged any other holidays while they’d been down here. It was difficult to judge the passage of time underground; eighteen months had been an eternity, and when you were facing an eternity of unknowns, did months and dates even register anymore? There didn’t seem to be a point. But, she guessed it would be a nice change of pace for everyone to break from their monotonous schedule, and it surprised her that a woman like Venable was willing to deviate.

And, she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t enjoy the thought of attending a Victorian-style masquerade. All of those young adult books and romance movies had lied to her about how many masquerade balls she’d encounter in her life. She’d always dreamed of wearing in a dress like the ones sitting in her armoire now, floating around a room full of masked partygoers sipping expensive champagne until an alluring, mysterious dance partner took her hand as if she’d stumbled into some kind of dark fairytale.

She spent the rest of the afternoon putting her outfit together, choosing an aubergine gown with full layers of skirts similar to the one she’d worn last night. This one had sleeves that stopped at her elbows, where a cascade of ruffles and black lace accented the satin fabric in intricate detail. Supplies to construct a mask were limited, but she was able to scavenge the meager belongings she’d brought with her to the outpost and utilize the extra fabric from the modern clothes she wasn’t going to wear. And, there’d been a sewing kit stowed in her school bag.

The end result wasn’t too bad, really—she’d created a half mask shape from the cardboard back cover of a notebook, sewing the black, silky fabric from the last blouse she’d worn in the outside world on top. She used extra lace from her armoire to decorate it, and sewed long strips of black lace on either side so she could tie it around her head.

There was a knock on her door just as she was making a few last minute adjustments to her ensemble.

“You coming?” Emily wanted to know.

“Yeah,” she called back. “I’ll meet you down there in a few minutes.”

“Don’t be late,” Emily joked.

She tied the lace in a delicate knot at the back of her head, pleased with the amount of creativity she’d mustered out of sheer boredom and determination. Voices carried in the circular hallway as she closed her door behind her—she caught Dinah’s and Andre’s backs just as they turned the corner. The heels of her Victorian-style leather boots clicked against the polished floor, creating a pleasant rhythm. How would they be throwing a party in this miserable place without booze and real food? Would they at least get a better music selection? Games and parlor tricks? Ghost stories?

A hand grabbed hers from behind, jolting her from her thoughts. She spun around, her heart beating so loud it nearly hurt, and found Langdon there. Those footsteps she’d memorized over the past couple of days hadn’t alerted her at all; they hadn’t been there, _he_ hadn’t been there just a moment prior, she was sure of it. Really, _really_ sure.

“What the fu—”

“Come with me.” Langdon’s fingers entwined with hers. Her stomach somersaulted.

She glanced in the direction of the staircase. “If I’m not down there in two minutes, Venable’s going to have a coronary. I have to go.”

“She’s not making the rules anymore,” he insisted. “I need for you to trust me. Do you?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”

“Everything will make sense soon, you have my word,” Langdon assured. “Now…do you trust me?” He drew out every word, slow and deliberate, and again she saw something soften his icy gaze.

She nodded. “Yes.”

After what Emily had told her about Venable’s authoritarian rule and what had transpired last night, Langdon was probably the only person she trusted in this whole damn bunker.

He led her back down the corridor, their fingers still laced together, her heart still beating so wildly that her pulse filled up her ears. The door to his suite clicked open, and he ushered her inside, only letting go of her hand to press his palm flat against the small of her back. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but his room looked identical to hers; tidy and sparse, the candles along the headboard of the bed burning low. Nothing seemed to be out of place, though she noticed a laptop on his desk, which was curious since hers hadn’t been able to get WiFi and had subsequently been drained of its battery months ago. With everything else going on—her thoughts were a goddamned scattered mess—it didn’t seem worth it to ask.

The warmth he radiated traveled along her spine as if he’d dragged his fingertips across her skin, but she felt the buttons of his coat brush against her gown. Langdon untied the lace knot, carefully, and the mask tumbled into her awaiting hands.

She spun around. “It’s a shame,” she mused. “I was kind of looking forward to the masquerade.”

“Believe me when I say you’ll be better off missing this one.” The trace of a crooked smile on the edge of his lips was dark, to say the least.

“Why, exactly?”

He reached out and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re far too important to me.”

It took a moment for the full weight of his words to register. “They didn’t make the cut,” she whispered. “You’re eliminating them… _all_ of them.”

She wanted to know _why_ —what made her so important? Was it her power alone?

“Almost,” Langdon answered. “But I’m not the one getting my hands dirty…I don’t have any interest in that. It wasn’t terribly difficult to pass the job off to someone else with the right amount of subtle pressure and incentive. Ms. Venable helped turn this place into a powder keg—it was only right that she should be the one to drop the match.”

“And she’s going to burn, too.”

Langdon moved past her toward the desk. “She’ll come after me first.”

“And me, once she finds I’ve escaped whatever’s going on at this party.”

“You…will be perfectly safe.” He lowered into the chair, the sickly glow of the laptop screen illuminating his face once he tugged it open.

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the closed bathroom door. “I have to ask, only because I’m curious: how’re you planning to take them out?”

He propped a hand beneath his chin. “Poisoned apples.”

“That’s poetic.” _Like some kind of dark fairytale_ , she thought. In a fucked up Biblical sense.

“Of all people, I figured you’d be the one to appreciate my sense of humor.”

There were a million other questions on her mind, namely why and how she’d been the fortunate survivor, why he kept staring at her with this enigmatic expression in his eyes, but the measured strike of Venable’s cane hitting the floor in the hall outside made the words falter on her tongue. Her pulse raced as the door finally clicked and Venable stepped into the room with Mead on her heels.

Venable’s steely gaze swept over her. “ _You_ ,” she hissed. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Langdon shut his laptop, turning around in his chair to level her with a look of mild annoyance.

“She’s here at my request, finishing her interview,” he explained, glancing between both Mead and Venable. “What’s this?”

“We’re making the selections now, Mr. Langdon. And I’m afraid you didn’t make the cut.”

He laughed, trailing his fingers through his strawberry blond curls. “I’m sorry, I wanted to let you have your moment, but I just couldn’t hold it in.”

“You think this is funny?”

“I think I’m impressed, Ms. Venable. I wasn’t sure you had it in you.” He stood up from his chair and stepped forward. “You’ve passed the test.” Venable looked pleased, and she almost felt sorry for her. “You’re perfect for The Sanctuary.”

“Ms. Mead,” Venable said firmly.

She heard a click, saw the cold glint of metal in the light of the candles when Mead brandished a gun. Her heart clawed its way into her throat, and Langdon must’ve sensed it because he held his hand out, gesturing for her to remain where she was.

“Perhaps I’ll give you a choice, Mr. Langdon. Either you can go first, or I’ll let _her_ take the first bullet. It makes no difference to me.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” He cast a sidelong glance at Mead, who only raised her gun, slowly.

“ _Ms. Mead_ ,” Venable insisted. She pivoted on a heel to glare at her accomplice. Langdon watched them, his head tilted to one side, interested as if it was a game. And maybe it was.

She saw Mead’s hand waver, the barrel of the gun traveling from Langdon to Venable. After a tense moment that seemed to last for an age, the shot shattered the air and blood splattered down the front of Venable’s crisp white blouse. Scarlet blossomed from the wound in her chest, dripping onto the floor as a mixture of shock and betrayal darkened her face. Venable finally dropped, sprawled out at Langdon’s feet.

She heard the painful, wheezing last breaths that Venable tried desperately to force from her lungs. The tension eased out of her muscles and she felt like she could breathe again.

“I don’t know why I did that.” Mead’s voice shook a little. “I was always so loyal to her…”

“It’s all right.” He lowered into a crouch over Venable, taking in her final moments. The agonized wheezing stopped, the light in her eyes winking out. “You were obeying commands like you were programmed to do… _my_ commands.” Langdon pulled himself to his feet again. “Did you enjoy executing the poison apples plan as much as I enjoyed coming up with it?”

She pushed off the bathroom door, side-stepping Venable’s body while Langdon moved toward Mead.

“You wanted everyone dead,” Mead said, tearful.

“I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands dirty…learned that from my father. Always more fun to entice men and women to dirty deeds. Confirms what I’ve always believed.”

Mead sputtered. “Wha…what do you believe?”

“That all people, if given the right pressures and stimulus, are evil motherfuckers.”

“I…I’m having trouble with this,” Mead confessed, and released a calming exhale. “And I know I’m just a machine…”

“ _Never say that_ ,” Langdon countered, his voice rising a little. “You’re not just a machine, not to me.”

_You don’t have to hide, not from me. Never from me._

_You’re far too important to me._

His words echoed in her ears again. Who was she to Langdon?

“When I tasked The Cooperative’s R&D department to have you constructed, I gave them a prototype to model,” he explained.

This was news to her, and she was desperate to keep up. Clearly she had missed more than a few details about the occupants of Outpost 3. She’d always thought Mead a natural hunter, a warrior at heart, but she never suspected that she wasn’t fully human.

“A…prototype.” Mead tested the word out, attempting to piece together what he was saying.

“Of someone from my childhood. Someone very dear to me.”

Recognition flickered in Mead’s dark eyes. “The beautiful boy.”

Her mind swam in a haze. There was something missing, something she still couldn’t place. She tried to grasp at it but it kept wandering just out of reach.

“That was me,” Langdon said. “But I had to keep the most important part of you hidden from your mind.”

“Why?” Mead asked.

“To protect you.” She felt Langdon’s fingers entwine with hers again, shaking her from her own dazed thoughts. “ _Both_ of you.”

She looked at him, finally, new tears welling up in her eyes. “What?” she whispered.

“I lost you and I couldn’t bear it,” he told Mead. She heard the tremor in Langdon’s voice for the first time since they’d met, and watched a few tears slide down his face. As if by some instinct, she squeezed his hand. He looked at her, that same softness in his eyes that she’d noticed so rarely before. “I can’t imagine a new world without either of you by my side. The only women who ever really understood me.”

“Who ever really loved you,” Mead finished.

Mead gave him a knowing grin, and if she didn’t know any better, she thought it looked like a maternal sort of pride on Mead’s face. Langdon relinquished her hand to embrace Mead, the two of them holding tight to one another as if they’d once been mother and son. She still felt lost, adrift in a storm-swept sea with nothing to hold onto. What was it that she was missing?

“I…I still don’t understand,” she confessed. “I don’t know…”

“It’s all right,” Langdon reassured her. He took both of her hands, guiding her over to the edge of the bed where she sunk down into the neatly made mattress. Langdon knelt in front of her as Mead shadowed him, and she studied him, searching his crystal blue eyes for any kind of answers. He cradled her face, gently, and offered a soft grin. “It’s time for you to remember it all.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kudos and comments!! The response to the fic has been incredible.

The air shifted and changed, suspended in a single moment—not the breeze that stirred the leaves on the branches above her head, but the _energy_ around her. It felt different. She couldn’t figure out why or what it was, but the familiarity crept along the back of her neck. Her skin, her blood was alive with it, the darkness rising to the surface as if something—or maybe _someone_ —called out to her. She never knew what it was, _who_ it was that whispered her name and pierced through the static of her thoughts. But now it was shouting at her, summoning her to follow.

Mottled light broke through the leaves and spilled across the pages of the book propped against her knees. She’d stopped reading minutes ago. Her eyes fluttered closed and she took in a long, deep breath, almost as if she was afraid the feeling would leave. Afraid that the inexplicable current of energy was just her wild imagination, a hope, a desperate part of her trying to reach out to something that wasn’t really there.

When she opened her eyes, she found a boy standing on the sidewalk. He leaned against the whitewashed picket gate, this complete stranger, looking at her like he _knew_. And yet, there was a curiosity in the way he tilted his head, his lips parted a little, his hands fidgeting around the wooden posts. Neither of them could figure out why they were staring, but the air had stilled around them. Waiting. Halting in deference. The birdsong had even stopped.

The gate creaked on its hinges when it swung open. “What’re you reading?”

His voice was disarming, his question not what she’d expected, somehow. And she had so many of her own. _What are you? Are you like me? Am I broken?_

Heavy combat boots trampled across the grass until he folded himself cross-legged in front of her under the large oak tree. This strange boy in ripped black jeans sat down as though they’d known each other for lifetimes.

She regained her ability to speak. “ _The Last Man_ ,” she answered. “It’s by Mary Shelley.”

His gaze traveled to the pages that fluttered beneath her hand, then up to her eyes, lingering there. She hadn’t anticipated his boyish mop of disheveled strawberry blond curls at war with the intensity in the clear blue of his eyes. They were bright and endless and seemed far older than he probably was, though she couldn’t judge his age at a glance. Their close proximity made the shift in energy more noticeable, almost palpable, surrounding them both. Power curled around him like tendrils of smoke; a shiver roved down her spine as it whispered to her.

“Never read it. What’s it about?” he wanted to know.

“The end of the world.”

His face was suddenly lit by a wide, beaming grin. “Is it any good?”

“Yeah…I’ve already read it a few times.” She closed the worn paperback. “You’re new around here, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” _I’d know if I’d seen you._ _I’d feel it._

“Ms. Mead took me in,” he explained. He toyed with a loose thread on his jeans. Strands of messy golden hair fell across his forehead into his eyes. “I’m Michael—Michael Langdon.”

“Mead…” She tested the name aloud. “Down the street? Is _that_ what her name is? I’ve never asked; she hates my aunt so we’ve kind of got this silent agreement thing going on. She’s always seemed nice.”

The name conjured images of a woman with short, jet black hair and dark lipstick. She walked the neighborhood sometimes, cloaked in black and carrying herself with an edge that she could only wish to imitate. If her aunt happened to be halfheartedly tending to her garden or idling on the porch, Ms. Mead’s scathing glare could wound. There was only one person on this street who’d take in a boy like him. In the middle of suburbia, Ms. Mead looked as out of place as she felt. Maybe that’s why she’d always been so kind to her.

Michael nodded. “You want to meet her?”

“Really? Right…now?”

He pushed himself up from the lawn, flecks of dirt and blades of grass shaking loose from his jeans. The black T-shirt that looked a size too big on his lean frame billowed in the wind. He smiled, nearly bursting with excitement, and held out his hand to her.

“Come on.”

She hesitated, her fingers hovering inches from his. The air was still charged and heavy, and she wondered what would happen if she followed that whisper, that power coiling in his wake. His pale skin felt hot to the touch. Michael held onto her hand for a few moments longer after he’d helped her up from the ground, his cherubic face betraying the darkness that she sensed coursing through his veins. She’d never sensed it on another person before, and judging from his inquisitive, awestruck stare, neither had he.

She dropped Michael’s hand. They fell into step beside each other on the sidewalk, the book tucked underneath her arm. She wanted to ask him—and she came close to it on their walk down the street, but the questions died on her tongue. There was no possible way he hadn’t felt it, too, if it’s what led him to the front yard and pulled him toward her. How could she find the words for what she wanted to ask? How could she even bring it up if it sounded totally unbelievable?

Michael let her in through the backyard and pushed open the French doors on the side of the house. She stepped into a surprisingly light and airy kitchen full of vintage appliances and cream cabinets. It wasn’t at all what she’d imagined.

“Who’s your friend, Michael?” Ms. Mead asked, walking in from the adjoining room. “Oh, I know you! I’m Miriam Mead…it’s about time we finally introduced ourselves. You live down the street in that pretty little house with the picket fence.”

“Sometimes,” she clarified. “My parents are kinda paranoid about leaving me by myself, so they send me to my aunt’s when they’re not around. Which is often.” Paranoid wasn’t the right word, she knew, but it was close enough. If she was left to her own devices, she got bored, and then she got creative with the power at her disposal. They didn’t like that. “Not that she keeps an eye on what I do…but—”

“That wretched woman,” Ms. Mead said. The lines between her eyebrows deepened as she frowned. “I’ve never liked her. The feeling’s mutual, though—always has been, ever since I can remember. You know why she’s so damn pissed all the time, don’t you?” Ms. Mead wore a grin full of mischief, her dark eyes sparkling.

She shook her head at the same time Michael asked, “Why?” He seemed to know what she didn’t, rocking on his heels, eager for the details. “What’d you do?”

“What _didn’t_ I do?” Ms. Mead laughed. “Oh, nothing too serious, don’t you worry. But I’ve been known to slip into her garden at night. A few rituals, mostly harmless. Just little things that will irritate the hell out of her. She knows it’s me, and that’s what makes it fun.”

Michael laughed. “That’s awesome.” She had to laugh, too. Her aunt deserved it.

“You know, I always had a good feeling about you.” Ms. Mead wrapped an arm around her shoulders in a half-hug before letting her go. Michael looked pleased, and for a second she figured that this is what it felt like to belong someplace. “You’re welcome here any time, and don’t be shy, either. Those doors right there are always open.”

Ms. Mead left them, her footsteps fading somewhere in the house. She ventured further once she spotted the one anomaly in their normal, suburban kitchen: an altar nestled across from a small, round table, the centerpiece of the room. Draped in black cloth, it housed an assortment of candles that dripped black and red wax down the elegant black candleholders. A silver pentagram caught the light from the flames from above, while a collection of offerings were displayed on the shelf set deep into the wall.

She left the book on the table and stood in front of the altar, enticed by the flicker of the candles. She’d always heard of these types of practices—she’d done her research—but she hadn’t ever seen them for herself. Her hand drifted over the candles; the power in the room was intoxicating, and she wanted to reach out to it. She couldn’t help herself. It was intense, flowing from Michael like dark wine.

The candles flared beneath her open palm, dancing wildly until the flames licked at her skin. She didn’t feel any pain, didn’t burn her flesh. The fire resumed its normal height at her command, fresh wax making trails of crimson and black.

“You have it in you, too.”

Michael’s voice was low beside her. She glanced to her left to see his eyes fixed on the exposed skin of her inner forearm where she knew he’d noticed the ugly bruises she tried to hide under her plaid button down. She tugged on her sleeve.

“When did it start?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s always been there, even when I didn’t know what it was or how to use it. All I’ve been told is that whatever it is, this…power…it comes from the dark.”

“I felt it.”

“I know you did,” she turned toward him, “because I sensed it on you, too—and that’s never happened to me before. I’ve always been afraid of it, but this…it’s something different.” _You’re something different,_ she wanted to say, but stopped herself.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” She caught a tremble in his words, a look akin to panic flashing in his eyes.

“No.”

She tugged at her sleeve again, a habit she couldn’t break. There was that edge to him that she couldn’t decipher, something far greater and more sinister than whatever she carried in her soul, but she didn’t fear him. He was still a boy, after all. Still human like her.

Relief softened his face. “I used to be afraid, too,” Michael told her. “And then Ms. Mead, she found me and helped me figure out what it all meant. What I’m supposed to do…who I am. Things are a lot clearer now.”

“Do you know what I am?” She was so desperate for anything. It was the first time she’d encountered anyone who might’ve had the right answers.

Michael shook his head. “No, but the power you have can’t be very different from mine. It feels the same.”

“Yours is _a lot_ stronger,” she reasoned. “It almost knocked me on my ass when I tapped into it just now.”

“I inherited my father’s power.” Michael rubbed at the back of his neck, shoving one hand into the pocket of his jeans. As if this was just a normal conversation. “I’m still learning to control it myself.”

Her parents didn’t pass this onto her, she knew that for sure. “Your father?”

Michael angled his head toward the altar behind her, wordless. She twisted around, her silhouette reflected in the portrait sitting there. The Devil himself.

Her mouth dropped open a little. She scooped up her tattered paperback from the table and breezed past him. “I should go.”

“Wait— _please_ ,” his voice broke as he trailed behind her, “I’m not lying. I didn’t mean to scare you, but it’s the truth. I thought…I thought maybe it would help you.” Her fingertips skirted the handle of the door. “That it would make you understand. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She sighed. “I know.” When she turned around, she didn’t find anything menacing about him at all. The power that seemed to consume the very air they breathed had receded, and Michael’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I know—I’m sorry. It’s just…a lot to process.”

Understatement of the century.

He nodded. “You shouldn’t run away from it.” She wrenched open the door, and it let out a high-pitched squeal. Michael braced one hand against the doorframe. “That door’s always unlocked.”

She shoved the paperback into Michael’s chest before she crossed the threshold, and he caught it. “You said you never read it,” she explained. “And I’ll need it back eventually.”

He smiled.

 

***

 

“She shouldn’t hurt you like that.”

Michael stood over her while she lit the squat, half-melted candles on the floor. The muggy evening outside had seeped into the room and she’d shrugged off the thin zip-up sweatshirt over her tank top to accommodate, so Michael had immediately found the patchwork of bruises on her shoulders and upper arms. Some were newer than others, shades of brown and purple mingling with splotches of red and a sickly yellow-green. Once the last wick caught flame, she flicked the lighter off.

“She shouldn’t hurt you at all,” Michael insisted. “It’s not right.”

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t seem to give a shit,” she answered. “She only does it when she’s drunk and pissed off. If my parents find out, they’ll dump me at some other useless relative’s house or ship me off to one of those awful boarding schools.” She slipped the lighter into her jeans pocket and rose from the grimy floor. “You’d miss me too much.” She tried to offer an easy smirk, but Michael’s anger didn’t dissipate.

“You don’t have to put up with it, you know. You’re stronger than her.”

She brushed off her hands. There was dust everywhere—she could see it floating in the light thrown from the candles around the room. It was gritty beneath her shoes and tickled at her nose.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. If I fight back…what happens if I go a step too far?”

“She’d deserve it.” A shadow crossed over Michael’s face. “For treating you like this.” The coldness in his tone startled her for just a second. Whenever he allowed his darker tendencies to take over, the shift always seemed jarring on his boyish features. The surge of power prickled along her skin; his emotions always exacerbated them.

All the time she’d spent with Michael since they’d met a few months ago—they were together almost every day; she preferred his and Ms. Mead’s company rather than her aunt’s disinterested presence or the confines of her own house—and he hadn’t given her the details about where he’d come from. She knew nothing about his life before Miriam took him in, nothing about his family apart from what had fathered him.

But Michael had learned about her parent’s neglect, the work that conveniently kept them from having a role in raising her, their endless arguments. How she existed in their lives as a stranger. Or maybe something unwanted.

“You seem to know a thing or two about shitty families,” she ventured. He avoided her, kicking at a pile of nondescript debris on the floor. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, but whatever happened…you can tell me instead of letting it simmer.”

 _Part of you is still human_ , she mused. She could never understand having a legacy like his, could never fully grasp the concept of such high expectations forced on her before she’d even been born. She’d observed enough about Michael to pick up on his quirks, those flashes of near childlike innocence that managed to creep through all of the darkness he harbored in his soul. He seemed so young, but yet there was something archaic and otherworldly in his eyes. He may have been the Devil’s son, but evil didn’t rule him entirely, not all the time. Just like the dark had staked its claim in her, and she still felt and cared and _loved_.

She could see why they’d gravitated toward each other. But she also wondered what he could’ve been like before, what might’ve been if they had both traveled a different path. She’d come to relish the feeling the darkness gave her—and had no doubt that Michael did as well—but sometimes she had to wonder. With evil breathing down their necks, calling them home, drawing from the well of inherent power in them, would it have been possible to be anything else?

“It doesn’t matter, it’s over with,” Michael said. “They only held me back. Didn’t want anything to do with me.”

She didn’t know how much of that she believed, but she dropped the subject. Maybe one day he’d tell her everything.

“That makes two of us.”

Michael raked a hand through his hair. “All right, no more stalling. You promised.” He gestured vaguely at the room. “Let’s see it.”

For the past few weeks, they’d been scouring the suburbs for derelict abandoned houses. Boarded up windows covered in a mosaic of graffiti, broken furniture and garbage littering the empty, cobweb-infested rooms—the usual dilapidation. There were a lot of them in these neighborhoods; vacant shells left to rot, just sitting in the middle of their overgrown yards. They’d become the perfect haven for the two of them to flex their powers without having to accidentally wreck Miriam’s house.

“Patience is a virtue,” she joked in singsong.

Michael scowled, though there was a trace of a smirk in the corner of his lips. “You’re horrible.”

“Stating the obvious.”

She brushed off her hands on her jeans again—the dust seemed to want to cling to her sweaty skin—and inhaled. There was a faint fragrance from the candles, which she’d bought for cheap and hoarded in her bedroom. They smelled like an old woman’s perfume, but they got the job done.

Michael stood opposite her, one arm folded behind his back, his chin tilted upward as he waited. She lifted her hands, her fingers splayed, her palms reaching outward to gather up the power that crackled around them. A rumble began somewhere, a low sound that reminded her of a distant train humming over railroad tracks.

The room, possibly a den or a living room in its previous life, had four wide windows; all of them had remained intact, none of them boarded over. They started to shake, the glass rattling in the old wooden frames. With a flourish of her hands, all four of them exploded with a tinny, roaring crash, the pieces of glass creating a luminous arc in the light of the candles. A cascade of tiny, jagged shards suspended in the air, not one of them nicking their skin as they finally pattered onto the floor once she let go of them.

Michael shook his head, strands of golden blond matted to his temples from the night’s balmy temperature. “Oh, come on…you can do better than _that_.”

“Hush,” she dismissed him with a wave of her hand, though she was laughing, “I’m just warming up. Not all of us are as lucky as you, Devil boy.” That childish smirk resurfaced on Michael’s face and he shifted on his feet, trying so very hard to hide his grin.

She took a few breaths and tapped into the power singing in her veins again, feeling it surge along with the energy from Michael. The strength of it washed over her like a tidal wave, nearly knocking her off balance. She planted her feet apart to keep hold of it, digging deep to maintain control before it got too unwieldy. Sweat beaded on her brow and dripped down her back as the temperature spiked—the candle flames shot up to twice their height, then resumed their normal size.

But she wasn’t finished yet.

A gust of wind blew through the room just before fire materialized seemingly out of nowhere, rising up from the dirty, glass-ridden floor. She drew patterns in the air with her index finger, watching the flames move and spark as they formed a giant circle around both of them. Controlled. Burning, but not consuming anything in their path. The room was suffused with the scent of it, rich and dark and laced with a hint of sulfur.

Michael clapped, taking a few steps to meet her in the middle of the circle. The orange glow painted long shadows across his face and picked up the reddish highlights in his curls. “There you go,” he praised. The shadows made his eyes dark, but his smile was radiant. Proud. “I knew you could do it.”

She clenched her fists, extinguishing the fire. “Your turn.”

Michael waved the haze of smoke away, then swiped the back of his wrist across his forehead to keep the perspiration from dripping into his eyes. She wasn’t new to this; she’d seen him use his powers just as much as she’d flexed her own in the past few weeks, and she never quite got over the sight of it. The _feeling_ of it. Even though Michael didn’t have complete control yet, the strength behind him was exquisite.

She didn’t know how they’d managed to find each other in the mess of their own lives, but she was damned fortunate that he’d let her in and wanted to share all of this with her. Some days, she didn’t know if she considered herself worthy. But most days, she felt like they were just a pair of kids stumbling around in the dark, trying to make sense of things.

The room shook. The ground was vibrating, the walls creaking and unstable under the force of power. It felt like the earth itself was bending at his will. She watched the candles waver as the tremors continued until the flames went out, plunging them into the semidarkness. Wood began to split, the glass scattering around their feet, the ambient rumble like thunder welling up from the center of the house.

Michael trembled from the weight of the power he released into the room, his knuckles stark white at his sides. Dust rained down from the ceiling, chunks of plaster hitting the floor between them. She heard a crackle that sent her heart thudding against her ribcage—the walls began to break, a spider web of cracks working their way up from the baseboards.

And then Michael’s eyes went white. He started convulsing, losing control as the house shuddered and groaned. Rivulets of crimson spilled from his nostrils down the front of his sleeveless black shirt. She leapt forward just as Michael collapsed, taking a chunk of the roof with him.

“Michael!”

She backpedaled out of the way, coughing, waiting for the plume of dust to settle before she caught sight of him again. Michael lay sprawled on his back inches from where the roof debris had landed. She was on her knees beside him a second later, her pulse beating wildly, panic clawing its way through her chest.

“ _Michael_.” Her pulse slowed a little once she noticed the rise and fall of his chest. “Michael, open your eyes.” She leaned over him to knead her fingers through his hair, then traced the sharp lines of his cheekbones. “Come on, Devil boy, wake up.”

Michael stirred at last and exhaled a shaky breath. He blinked slowly, squinting up at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes still wide.

He pressed his fingers to his nose as he sat up, groaning, and stared at the red coating them. She heard his quiet gasp.

“Yeah.” Michael wiped his fingers on his jeans. His endless clear blue gaze found hers, and all she saw was a frightened child. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s _you_ I’m worried about. I’ve never seen you like that before.”

“I lost control.” Michael pushed himself up from the floor and she followed, her hand coming to rest against his back. He still looked dazed and wobbled a little on his feet. His voice sounded small and unsteady. Dirt streaked Michael’s forehead and nose and created gray shadows on his arms. “I don’t know…there was too much power inside me and I couldn’t stop it.”

“I think we should give it a rest for the night,” she suggested.

Michael nodded. He wiped at the blood that had trickled down his chin with the hem of his shirt.

“Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this ended up much longer than I anticipated, and since there's a few more memories to get through, the next chapter will be flashbacks as well. This chapter was the hardest one for me to write so far (I don't know why young!Michael is more difficult than older Michael...) but hopefully I did all right. Thank you for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your kudos and comments!! I'm overwhelmed by the response this fic has received. 
> 
> Another chapter of young!Michael flashbacks, this time with a warning for implied abuse. 
> 
> But, this chapter also has a fluffy scene I've been wanting to write for a while, and I hope you like it.

Her shoulder knocked into Michael’s as they walked, their laughter piercing the quiet of the neighborhood. Crickets thrummed in the grass and somewhere a few streets over a dog barked incessantly. She tried to tell him to keep his voice down when they approached her house, but it was no use—the two of them were caught in a cycle of infectious giggling. It was late and they were tired; so tired that everything became hilarious no matter how little it made sense. She would’ve crashed in the guest bedroom at Miriam’s if it wasn’t a school night. She’d spent the evening in their warm kitchen, the aroma of baking cookies lingering in the air long after she and Michael had finished devouring them. They played cards at the kitchen table for hours, gambling with chocolate chips and stealing the piping hot cookies off the cooling racks when Miriam wasn’t looking. Miriam warned Michael not to cheat while she gathered the necessary ingredients for a ritual that she hoped would cause a nasty septic leak in her aunt’s yard tomorrow night. Miriam had asked her if she wanted to participate and she was practically bouncing at the idea of savoring her aunt’s misery once her garden flooded.

She won a handful of times, but she knew Michael cheated or at least had some sort of preternatural insight that she didn’t possess that gave him an advantage. She wondered if he’d let her win. Michael’s poker face was impossible to break unless she gave him a jab in the shin underneath the table, and then he got downright smug.

The laughter died on her lips. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Michael’s smile faltered.

“They weren’t supposed to be home.” The porch light illuminated the driveway and the glossy windows of her parents’ car. The front door was open. They’d been waiting up for her. “You should probably go before they see you.”

Michael tensed beside her, then shook his head. He stared at her like it was ridiculous that she’d even considered it.

“No, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Their heads turned at once toward the porch from where they’d stopped at the end of the driveway. Her mother barged through the front door with her father trailing behind, both of them playing the part of concerned parents. She thought that maybe they were almost convincing. She wanted to laugh, but her mother’s tone was shrill and hostile and years of shouting matches through thin walls had programmed an automatic anxious response.

“Late,” she answered, stomping up the driveway, trying to stifle the panic that flared at the sound of her mother’s raised voice. Michael followed at her side, the rage inside him beginning to trigger the power he carried. It swept over her skin like fire. “Since when do you care? You’re never home.”

“Your aunt said you never showed up at her house.” Her father planted a hand on his hip as if this happened to be some kind of monumental error on her part, and a reason for them to finally acknowledge that they had a responsibility for her existence.

“I was with Michael,” she answered. “Thought you’d be happy about me making friends—again, not like a single one of you gives a shit.”

“She said this is becoming a habit of yours,” her father continued, conveniently ignoring his sister’s own blatant disinterest. “She’s been worried.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “About losing the bribe money for babysitting me? I could always save you the trouble and just…disappear. Bet you’d _love_ that.”

Michael’s hand clenched into a tight fist—she saw it out of the corner of her eye, felt him quaking with anger next to her as his face hardened and the darkness seeped into his gaze. The rage inside him amplified just before she noticed her father’s grimace. He pressed his fingers to the space between his eyebrows to quell the pain that she imagined had stabbed at him like an ice pick. Blood oozed from his nose and landed on the porch steps, looking almost black away from the light’s reach.

“Enough,” her mother warned. “Inside the house. _Now_.”

She wrapped her hand over Michael’s wrist, never breaking eye contact with her mother. Her father had already ducked inside, his hands cupped against his bloody nose. “I can handle it from here,” she whispered to him. Michael loosened his hold, and she let go. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Michael’s fingers brushed against hers. “Be careful,” he murmured. His breath ghosted along the shell of her ear. “Don’t ever let them make you feel powerless.”  

She shivered when a cool draft replaced the heat of his body and watched his silhouette disappear into the shadows of their tree-lined street. Once the front door slammed shut behind her, she followed the path to the kitchen marked by droplets of crimson on the hardwood floors. Her father was huddled over the sink, a dish towel pressed to his face, her mother hovering next to him.

“I can’t believe you.” Her mother lifted the hand that had been rubbing circles across her father’s back to point an accusing finger. “Doing _that_ out in the open where someone could see you, hurting your father like this. Unacceptable.”

She accepted the blame only because she didn’t want to give them another reason to keep her away from Michael.

“It’s two in the morning,” she reasoned. “If someone around here noticed anything, it was _you_ screaming at me from the porch.”

Her mother’s jaw dropped. Really, she didn’t know where she’d found that scrap of bravery, but it felt like she’d finally hit her breaking point.

“What makes you think you can speak to me like that?”

She scoffed. “I don’t know, why are you so interested in how I occupy my time?” She was seething, and she could feel it spread through her veins like a wildfire. It was a lot more than just simple anger; it had power behind it. “Why the fuck do you want to be my mother all of a sudden?” _You gave up on me a long time ago._

Her father wanted to intervene, she could tell, but the dish towel was working overtime to staunch the flow of blood. She had no idea what Michael had done to him, but the result had yet to wear off. Her mother swallowed hard. She’d been caught, and she knew it. There wasn’t any reason to pretend now, no reason to explain away the fact that she’d always come last in the list of her parents’ priorities. That for most of her life, her mother had been afraid of her.

“I don’t like you hanging around that boy,” she continued. “It’s making your affliction worse, I can see it.”

That was her mother’s name for it—an _affliction_ , a curse, for which there’d been no cure. And for a while she’d believed her mother. For years she thought something had been wrong, broken inside of her. That she needed to run from it, bury it and leave it alone.

Not anymore.

Her knuckles went white, her hand shaking as she finally released the anger welling up. Her mother let out a yelp when she slammed into the cabinets, the dishes inside rattling from the impact. She fell to the floor and scrambled until she backed up against the lower cabinets, trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

“ _Go_ ,” her mother choked out. Her airway was beginning to constrict, the oxygen forced from her lungs at her own command. “Get out of my sight.”

Her mother clutched at her neck, wheezing, trying to suck in a breath. Veins protruded from her temples with the effort, her face going red, then almost pale.

The whisper she’d heard for so long in the static became a scream, that voice calling to her in a language she couldn’t possibly understand. And yet she did. The power that coursed through her seemed different this time; more immense and much more potent. She saw flashes of fire and the darkness seeping down the walls like black paint blossoming in a pool of clear water. The heady scent of charred wood and brimstone engulfed her senses, connecting her to something far greater than herself.

And then something—someone?—knocked her off course, breaking the link. She returned to herself sprawled out on the kitchen floor on her side, and it felt like she’d just woken up from a dream, taken a breath for the first time. A high-pitched droning sound filled her ears, and somewhere there was a distant echo of her father yelling, her mother sobbing hysterically. She blinked until the room came back into focus. In a daze, she crawled off the kitchen floor and swayed on her feet, her hands braced on walls and furniture as she navigated the way to her bedroom.

Her whole body shuddered, the adrenaline and anxiety still alive in her system. She felt like she couldn’t take a deep breath, couldn’t think, couldn’t remember what had happened outside of herself before the fire took over. Her limbs were heavy and her chest hurt. She collapsed into her mattress, listening to the tones of her parents’ raised voices through the walls until she cried herself to sleep.

 

***

 

She fled her aunt’s house in the middle of a downpour.

Water that had already pooled on the uneven sidewalks sloshed up her jeans as she dashed through them, soaking the denim. Pressure mounted behind her eyes and burned down the back of her throat from the tears she tried frantically to subdue. She was too busy running to be distracted by it. The sky hung low, the clouds a muddy gray against the encroaching night. The storm didn’t relent just because she was trying to escape, trying to get a handle on her frayed nerves. She was drenched from head to toe by the time she slipped into Miriam’s backyard, the rain a gusty torrent of freezing water that plastered her clothes to her skin.

She leaned against the closed door once she rushed inside, water collecting on the hardwood floor at her feet as it dripped from her clothes and sodden hair. The tears came then—loud, heaving sobs that left her almost bent double from the weight of them. She reached a shaky hand up to her throbbing head and wept harder when her fingers came away bloody.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Miriam took her bruised, bloodied face between her hands. She hadn’t even heard Miriam come into the kitchen, but she nearly collapsed into her kind touch. “What happened? Poor thing, you’re soaked to the bone. Here, sit down…come sit over here…easy, now, that’s it. It’s all right. You’re safe.”

Miriam eased her into one of the chairs at the table while she tried to catch her breath. She tasted iron on her tongue, her bottom lip split open again from the effort of crying. She could smell it all around her, too—her nose had bled, she was sure of it, but most of the scarlet trickling down her face was from the cut along her hairline.

“That awful woman,” Miriam grumbled. “I’m gonna get you cleaned up, don’t you worry.”

“What did she do to you?”

Michael’s voice was pure steel from somewhere behind Miriam, but through the anger that flashed like a storm across his face, she noticed the deep concern. He was at her side a moment later, taking her chin in between his thumb and forefinger with the lightest of touches. The blue of his eyes glistened with fresh tears, but he didn’t let them fall. His thumb traced along the curve of her jaw, careful of the bruise that had started to blossom there.

“We got into an argument…about my mom.” Michael’s hand wandered into her hair and he raked his fingers through the tousled, drenched strands. She sniffled, then winced. “I threw her into a table…I thought she was going to kill me.”

Miriam returned to the kitchen with a first aid kit and a quilted blanket, which she draped around her shoulders. “Is she still breathing?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a damn shame.” Miriam settled into the chair opposite and set to work wiping the blood off her face gingerly. “I should’ve poisoned her a long time ago when I had the chance.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Michael was at the side door in a few paces, but Miriam held up her hand.

“You’ll do no such thing.”

Michael turned sharply. “She can’t keep getting away with this.” The dishes in the cabinets and jars on the counter shuddered from the burst of energy.

“And she _won’t_ ,” Miriam promised. “Last thing we need is to do something impulsive and foolish. That won’t help the situation at all—not right now, not tonight. I know you’re angry; hell, so am I, but she’ll get what’s coming to her when the occasion arises. We just have to be smart about it and wait.”

“I don’t want her to get hurt again.” She saw the tremor in his lower lip, even if he fought against it. “If something happens…”

“She’ll be perfectly safe,” Miriam assured. She let out a sharp exhale when the antiseptic came in contact with the open cut that edged her hairline. Miriam took her hand. “You’re staying here with us for the night. You’re not going back there, not if I have anything to say about it.”

“My parents are out of town for the weekend.”

Miriam’s face broke into a broad smile. “Even better.”

 

***

 

The patter of raindrops against the window coupled with distant rumbles of thunder was enough to soothe her anxiety at last. She found herself exhausted but unable to sleep. Which was fine because Michael couldn’t sleep, either. She’d crept down the hall from the guest bedroom to his room; he’d been awake, and she’d crawled silently into bed beside him. Without a word, Michael pulled her in close so that she was nestled in the crook of his arm, her head tucked against his chest. The painkillers Miriam had given her earlier were beginning to wear off—her cheek had a dull ache, the laceration on her head a mild annoyance—but there wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to be, not right now.

Michael dragged his fingers lazily through her hair, still damp from the shower she’d taken after Miriam patched up her injuries. At least now the metallic odor of her own blood had been replaced with the floral fragrance of shampoo. She’d borrowed a shirt and a pair of pajama pants from Michael—she really needed to start leaving her own clothes here in case of future emergencies—both of which managed to look a few sizes too big on her slender frame given their height difference. Not that she cared, really; she was warm and comfortable, wrapped up in Michael’s scent with his heart beating beneath her ear.

“It’s good that you radiate heat like a furnace,” she told him. Her voice was hoarse and a little sleepy. “Because I’m still freezing.”

That rain had been colder than she thought, leaving her with a chill she couldn’t quite shake.

She felt the soft vibration of his laughter below her cheek. Michael’s hand traced patterns across her back, warming her skin underneath the fabric of her shirt. His other hand still hadn’t left her hair, and she was quickly becoming lulled by the gentle rhythm of his fingertips.

Michael sighed. It sounded long-suffering to her ears; an exhaustion that she couldn’t fully comprehend.

“If something had happened to you, if she had—”

“ _Don’t_ , Michael,” she countered. “Don’t go there.” She draped her arm over his stomach. “I wouldn’t have let her kill me, you know that.”

“I know.” He was quiet for a long minute. “I just…don’t want to lose anyone else.”

She could hardly believe this was the same boy who’d nearly brought an entire house down around himself, who’d used his powers in silent rage to inflict pain on people who’d hurt her, who’d been brought into this world just to tear it down.

“You won’t,” she assured when she heard him sniffle. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

“The world will be different someday,” Michael said, and she closed her eyes, conjuring the images of fire that had come to her when she’d lost herself in the midst of her own power. “Something better will rise from the ashes once this one’s done burning. I don’t know how to get there…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I think the two of us were meant to find our way to each other.”

She opened her eyes. “It feels stronger than just a coincidence.” She’d believed that was true for some time now.

“I can’t do this alone,” Michael admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You don’t have to.”

That night, Michael finally told her about the house he’d been born in—a house haunted by too many ghosts, a house where the only family he’d known had given him up to the darkness.

The following weekend, she stole the last breath from her aunt’s lungs with a flick of her wrist after she’d passed out drunk in her bedroom. She and Michael watched the house burn down together, standing side-by-side on the grass, bright orange embers drifting upward to meet a pitch black sky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their friendship has been so interesting to explore, and we're just at the surface of it! I figured if Michael is going to trust in someone to this extent, it would be someone he'd consider his equal, and someone he'd find common ground with. They have similarities in their upbringings aside from their powers and that's what's pushed them together enough to confide in one another and depend on each other. And since he's needy as hell, he's always afraid of everyone leaving him and pushing him away, etc. But, she's not going anywhere anytime soon... 
> 
> Now that I'm done rambling, I'd love to know what you think in the comments! And thank you SO MUCH again for your support of this story. It means a lot! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your kudos and comments!! I'm still trying to get over the response to this fic. :)
> 
> A quick note about the chapter: the flashbacks jump around a bit, so you should know that the first one takes place prior to her meeting Michael (let's say a year, approximately) and the second flashback picks up the normal flashback timeline as it is in the show, with Michael at Hawthorne.

Years’ worth of memories flooded back all at once, filling up gaping holes that she never realized had been there in the first place. So much of her had gone missing for so long; she’d felt such a void inside and never knew why. She broke from her reverie with a shaky, tearful gasp, overwhelmed by the swift onslaught of emotion. It took her a few moments to return to the private suite in the outpost and let the recovered fragments of herself sink in.

“Michael.”

She reached out to where he had knelt in front of her, taking his face between her hands, her thumb catching a tear that had slipped down his cheek. She tried to relearn the sharp curves of his face with her fingertips. She studied Michael as if she were seeing him for the first time, and in a way, she was—he looked so different from that boy with the unruly golden curls and crooked smile.

They’d been apart from each other for some time and she still couldn’t figure out why. What was it that had separated them? It couldn’t have been by choice—the connection she felt in her heart, singing through her blood was too profound for that. This world had finally collapsed in on itself, and the two of them were meant to be standing side-by-side, as always.

She threaded her fingers through his long hair, searching for a glimmer of that boy who’d walked through her aunt’s front yard, took her hand, and never looked back.

His eyes were the same: soft and bright blue. She was captivated by the way he looked at her, relief mingling with adoration.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him quietly, her brow furrowed. “How could I forget you?”

Michael placed his hand over hers, guiding it from where she cupped his cheek to his lips, and kissed her palm.

“None of that is your fault,” he drawled. His tone was gentle, yet solemn.

His thumb traced over the back of her hand. “After I lost Ms. Mead, and I came so close to losing you, I tampered with your memories myself, for your own protection. To keep you safe until we found each other again. You were the last person I had left…and it was because of _me_ that you were in danger. I couldn’t risk your life. Never again.”

“You knew exactly who I was the moment you set foot in here.”

He smiled through the quiet tears that trailed down his chin. “Of course I did.”

“Then the interviews…” She dropped her hands to his chest, her fingers finding purchase in the fabric of his shirt.

“Not all of it was a ruse.” Michael settled his hand on top of hers again, and she entwined their fingers as if it was a habit she’d always known. “I wanted to earn your trust again, and I’d hoped that our conversations would help you to remember on your own. And part of you did—I could see it, even if you couldn’t.”

“Your restraint is impressive.” Her fingers tightened around his. “All the time we must’ve spent apart… You let me go, and you never had the luxury of forgetting. I can’t imagine how awful that must’ve been, after everything else.”

“I removed myself from your memories while you slept,” Michael explained. He leaned in closer, the back of his fingers skirting along her cheek, his rings grazing her skin. “I spared us from the pain of a goodbye because I knew it would only be temporary.”

She shook her head. “I know you too well.” She untangled her fingers to cradle his face, the breath caught her throat when she saw that abandoned boy staring back at her, always so afraid that she would leave. “Even if it wasn’t meant to last forever, you still carried around enough pain for the both of us.”

“I told you before that you didn’t have to do this alone, and I meant it.” Her lips hovered over his, and Michael brushed his nose against her own, anticipating, _wanting_ what was just within reach.

It had been fucking ages since she’d felt wanted.

Michael’s breath hitched, his eyes fluttering closed. “I’ve missed you,” he confessed, a mere whisper into her lips, his breath mingling with hers. In his quiet confession she heard the voice of her Michael—her dearest friend, always so much more to her than the Devil’s son.

She kissed him slowly, lingering as if she’d waited for a lifetime. She tasted the salt from the tears on his lips when Michael drew her in deep, her face in the shelter his warm hands. It was a surprisingly gentle kiss, an ardent feeling of need just beneath the surface, the rush of energy between them enough to cause the candles around the room to almost extinguish themselves at once.

She grinned against his lips while they took a breath, amused at the familiarity of how Michael had kissed her. Their kisses had been few and far between; they’d proved their loyalty, their care for each other in different ways. It hadn’t ever mattered all that much to her, anyway. There had always been that hesitant, uncertain tension that seemed to stiffen Michael’s movements before he gave himself over. It had nothing to do with her, she knew that; everything about what Michael had become was there to seduce and charm, but he so rarely experienced the genuine desire to act on it.

And it appeared to have been quite a while since they’d last kissed.

They parted, and Michael rested his forehead against hers, one hand still slightly tangled up in her hair. She inhaled deep, relishing the darkness that enveloped them both, the resurgence of power that had left her as breathless as their kiss. She’d missed this, too. She’d forgotten how intoxicating it was, how much the power within her came alive whenever he was beside her.

He left a kiss on her forehead before he pulled himself up to his full height again. Ms. Mead smiled at them from where she’d stood watching their reunion, her unshed tears shining in the yellow glow of the room.

Michael’s hands wrapped around Ms. Mead’s forearms, holding her while he spoke. “I need help with the monumental task of remaking this world,” he explained. He glanced between her and Ms. Mead, looking at both of them earnestly, a brightness in his eyes and a grin on his lips. “And who better than the only people I never stopped trusting or loving?”

She smiled. It was one thing to know it in her heart—and she’d always known—but it was something else entirely to hear Michael say it.

Ms. Mead narrowed her gaze and touched Michael’s coat, gasping a little when her fingers came away red with Ms. Venable’s blood. “Your jacket is stained.”

Michael swiped his fingers over hers, feeling the slick, fresh blood between his thumb and forefinger. “So it is,” he answered. “There’s another one in the dresser.” He held out his hand to her and she took it, rising off the edge of the bed. “And you’ll find something more suitable in the armoire.”

There was a gown for her among his own wardrobe—a modern, dark red lace dress that paired beautifully with her Victorian leather boots. It had sheer dark red sleeves that ended just at her elbows; the fabric draped elegantly over her curves and stopped above her ankles. She let down her hair from its pins, delicate curls tumbling over one shoulder. She saw Michael’s reflection in the full length mirror when he stepped behind her, now dressed in a tailored dark red jacket. The plush velvet fabric was soft against her skin, and she shivered while he fastened the back of her dress, the warmth radiating from him lighting a fire up the length of her spine.

Michael circled around her until they faced each other and offered his hand, his palm turned upward.

“Hold out your hand,” he murmured. She settled her hand into his, her palm resting flush on his own. Michael slipped one of his rings onto her thumb, the scarlet gem set inside the intricate silver band glittering in the light of the candles.

She looked up at him through strands of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “What’s this?”

He brought her hand to his lips and left a kiss across her knuckles. “A promise,” he told her, holding her gaze with those pale blue eyes. Her stomach gave a little leap. She grinned, hooking her arm around Michael’s when he presented it to her. “What do you think?” he asked Ms. Mead.

She knew that garnering Ms. Mead’s approval had always been especially important to him, and right now she was looking at the pair of them like a delighted mother would, her smile, her own happiness reaching her eyes. It was still a wonder to her that they were all here again, alive and reunited amid the ruins of the old world. The only true family she’d ever had in her entire life.

“Hail Satan.”

“Not quite.” Michael smirked. “But I appreciate the sentiment.” His voice took on a lighter, amused tone. “Ms. Mead, I do believe you’re glowing.”

“For the first time I feel I know my place in the world,” Ms. Mead affirmed. “By your side.”

Something changed. She sensed it immediately—a power so different from their own unfurling itself in the core of the outpost. At first, she didn’t recognize its source, didn’t understand the strange energy that crackled like lightning across her skin. The hair on her arms stood on end, her heart beginning to race once she felt Michael tense beside her. He turned his head toward the door.

“What is it?” Ms. Mead’s smile faded.

“A powerful presence.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Mead asked. Her eyes darted between them both, frantic, trying to understand something that was beyond her own perception. “Everyone is dead.”

Michael’s voice grew cold, the darkness rising from within. “Not anymore.”

She realized then that the power surging inside the walls came from the light.

 _Magic_.

She kept both of her arms laced around one of his, her fingertips digging into the sleeve of Michael’s jacket as they exited the room. The circular corridor outside was eerily quiet, neither of them exchanging a word. She glanced up at Michael, trying to read his face, but he gave away nothing, not even to her. His pace was leisurely; she matched his steps and took a breath to rid herself of the worry that seized her chest. She tried to imitate the deceptively calm expression he wore, but it didn’t quite work.

“Trust me,” Michael whispered. He looked at her, finally, and tilted his chin up with that dark hint of amusement playing on his lips. “They won’t survive us, not this time.”

Feminine voices drifted from below and echoed through the cavernous interior, flittering about like apparitions. She and Michael descended the grand staircase with Ms. Mead following behind, and paused at the top of the last set of stairs. It was then that she saw where the light had emanated from—who had breathed magic into these long forgotten halls.

Cordelia Goode.

There were other witches surrounding her, some she didn’t know, and others she realized had somehow been hiding in plain sight this whole time. Just as she had once been. Mallory. Dinah. Coco, which shocked her most of all.

“Who cares?” another younger, blonde witch was saying, her back to them. “As if you could defeat anyone with that backwards voodoo shit.”

“How can any of you defeat me when I’ve already won?” Michael taunted.

Cordelia started toward the staircase, the rest of her witches trailing out of instinct. “You haven’t won.” Cordelia’s determined stare settled on her, recognition passing over her face. She didn’t say anything about her presence at Michael’s side, but the silent understanding was more than enough. They had both chosen their own allegiances a long time ago.

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed the state of the world,” Michael reminded.

“Almost as bad as your dinner jacket, but at least the world can be saved,” a redheaded witch observed wryly.

She rolled her eyes, but it was Michael who continued to mock them. “By _you_?”

“By _all_ of us,” Cordelia insisted.

“Hey—get the wax out of your ears,” Dinah snapped. “I’m here to watch.”

“But I’m not,” Coco declared. She gathered up her skirts and charged forward. Cordelia held out a hand to stop her. “Just don’t let me die, okay? That _really_ sucked the first time.”

“When we’re done, you’ll all wish you were still dead,” Michael promised.

“I always thought the world would end with fire and ice,” the redheaded witch mused, “not witches and warlocks.”

 

 

***

 

Louisiana was sweltering—a balmy, intolerable kind of heat that held no comparison to California. Sweat trickled down her back despite their rental car’s air conditioning, and her cotton dress stuck uncomfortably to her legs. She sighed, resting her forehead against the window as her father consulted the GPS to navigate them through unfamiliar streets. It was a gorgeous place, she had to admit: old, replete with historical architecture and Spanish moss and something ethereal that she sensed the moment they arrived in New Orleans.

They weren’t the type of family that took trips, _ever_ , so when her parents announced that they were shelling out their hard-earned money to fly to New Orleans, she didn’t know what to think. She’d figured it was some business trip of theirs, which meant she’d be stuck at her aunt’s house avoiding that mess of a woman while she drank herself into a stupor with her parents’ bribe money.

And then her mother had sat her down for a talk—something else they definitely did _not_ have a habit of doing—and told her about Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies. She’d balked at first, believing it to be some horrid reform school they wanted to ship her off to. It sounded expensive. Unattainable, according to her parents’ current finances. There was no damn way they’d pay for it, even if it meant getting her out of sight and out of mind for the foreseeable future.

But the school wasn’t anything like that all, she’d found out. A woman named Cordelia Goode had come forward a few years ago, making the existence of magic and witches public knowledge. Her school was a haven, a place where magic could be learned, where abilities could be controlled.

It was a place where she could finally belong. And maybe understand exactly what she was.

She could get used to Louisiana if that’s what it meant.

The pictures of the academy didn’t do it justice. She lifted her head from the glass when they pulled alongside the curb out front, a gust of humid air ushered into the car once she rolled the window down. She gawked at the towering, sophisticated mansion, her mouth dropping open. Impressive didn’t even cover it. Beautiful wrap-around porches, wrought iron balconies, pillars and endless wide windows. A bright white beacon framed by manicured hedges and an old, imposing gate. This place held history and power and she could _feel_ it.

Living in this stunning mansion out of her parents’ reach seemed like a dream. She _really_ could learn to tolerate Louisiana.

She was out of the car and at the gate before her father had pulled the key from the ignition. Curiosity and longing led her past the aged lamp posts that flanked it. She paused in the middle of the walkway, her head tilted upwards, squinting against the afternoon sun. Inhaling slowly, she allowed the magic of this place to wash over her. It prickled along her skin like an electric current, strong and dizzying and _new_.

It wasn’t something she’d felt before. She couldn’t really decide if that happened to be good or bad. If _this_ was magic, then what was the affliction inside of her?

Part of her wanted to run, to abandon the foolish idea that she could belong anywhere. But then her parents swept past her, and she followed them silently up the front steps. A pretty blonde woman in a simple black dress appeared at the door, offering a smile as she let them inside.

“Sorry we’re late,” her mother apologized. “Traffic was absolutely hellish.”

“That’s all right,” she answered. She held out her hand once the door was shut and they huddled in the foyer. “And _you_ must be our prospective new student. I’m Cordelia Goode, headmistress of the academy. It’s my hope that you’ll feel welcome here at Miss Robichaux’s.”

“Thank you.” She shook Ms. Goode’s hand and noticed the subtle shift in her demeanor. Her parents wouldn’t have detected it, since the welcoming smile never left her face. But her eyes faltered, giving her away. It was a look she knew all too well.

Fear.

Disappointment formed a knot in the pit of her stomach. Ms. Goode’s knowing gaze stayed on her for just a few moments too long, and finally the brightness of her smile waned.

Nevertheless, she kept up the composed, inviting façade and led her and her parents through the airy and open halls of the mansion to an impeccable dining room. There was an almost dreamy quality to the interior, with its pristine white walls and floors and furnishings. She found herself completely awed by its beauty and elegance, but never had she felt more out of place in her whole life.

“Tell me,” Ms. Goode said once they were seated across from her at the table, “what it is that’s brought you to the academy. I assume that her power has manifested in some way.”

“Her father and I, we’ve never known what it was,” her mother explained. “She’s had _this_ …whatever it is…since she was a child—we’re talking like, three or four years old here. I mean, can you imagine? A toddler snapping the necks of birds with a wave of her hand? It was a fucking nightmare—sorry, pardon my language, Ms. Goode. But it was…terrifying.”

She scowled when Ms. Goode seemed to flinch. “I don’t do that anymore,” she argued.

“Not that we know of,” her father countered.

_Yeah, well, you’re never around._

“But her…powers,” her mother continued, choking on the word as if it had left a sour taste in her mouth, “are getting stronger. We’ve noticed that much. And we’re hoping that she can find some guidance here at your academy.”

She stood up from the table. “I can show you.”

Ms. Goode lifted her palm. “No, that won’t be necessary.” She cast her eyes down at the tabletop where she clasped her hands, then glanced at her parents. She spoke gently, but with an authoritative tone. “I’m so sorry that you’ve come all this way, expecting so much. I know the confusion and desperation that you must feel—it breaks my heart that I can’t help your daughter. But I cannot allow her into the academy.”

“What?” her parents replied at once, in varying degrees of shock and outrage. She stood there in stunned silence, somehow knowing that Ms. Goode had already made her decision the second she’d looked her in the eye.

“It would be irresponsible of me to put my girls’ safety at risk.”

“You can’t—you’re our last resort,” her mother pleaded. “We don’t have any other options. We don’t know what else to do with her.”

“I can make a donation,” her father offered. She rolled her eyes. “We don’t have much, but—”

“No,” Ms. Goode said firmly. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, it’s just that it won’t do anything to change my mind.”

“ _Please_ ,” she spoke up at last. “I’m begging you, Ms. Goode, I need your help. You have to let me stay here…I can’t go home. I can’t stand another minute in that house.”

Her voice wavered and a few tears slid down her face, but she managed to stifle the sob that she felt at the back of her throat. “I don’t know what’s happening to me—I’m scared of it. They look at me like I’m cursed. _Please_ …I don’t want to feel that anymore. I don’t want this.” She sniffled, blinking away the tears that disrupted her vision. “I can sense how powerful you are. You _have to_ help me. You’re the only one.”

“As witches, we draw our power from the light,” Ms. Goode answered. “What you have inside of you is something…much different. Something darker. I wish that I could help you, but the simple, painful truth is that I don’t know how. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”

Chairs scraped across the floor. Her parents began to walk out of the room without saying another word to Ms. Goode, who’d risen slowly from the table. Her expression was stoic yet tempered with defeat around the edges, almost ashamed. She wanted so badly to hate Ms. Goode—she closed her eyes and imagined every window in this room exploding, the jagged pieces slicing that poor woman’s skin until crimson stained the white floors. But she couldn’t conjure up enough rage. The disappointment of Ms. Goode’s rejection had left her numb and utterly lost.

The breezy room, which had been full of sunlight when she sat down, suddenly grew cold. Her parents’ moods had taken an immediate sharp turn for the worst; she didn’t need any sort of power to pick up on that. She dreaded the inevitable quiet, angry ride to the airport. They wouldn’t be making a detour to enjoy the French Quarter, not after this. She’d go straight home to her own prison, suffering with this affliction alone.

“Let’s go,” her mother snapped from the foyer.

She buried her face in her hands, scrubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms until she had regained some semblance of composure.

Ms. Goode settled a hand on her shoulder to stop her on the way out. “There’s still light in you,” she said. “I _feel_ it. Know that if I ever find a way to help you, I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise you.”

***

 

“You clean up nice, Devil boy.”

She wondered if he’d felt her presence before she’d even perched on the edge of his bed.

Michael turned around from where he had just draped a black blazer over the back of the desk chair, the same boyish grin on his face that she’d recognize no matter what. He had changed, though—those once unruly golden curls had been tamed, no longer falling into his eyes. Gone were the ripped jeans and tattered shirts, replaced with the pressed, stylish uniform of the Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men.

It was after curfew, so Michael had rolled up the sleeves of the starched white button down shirt underneath his black sweater vest up to his elbows. He continued to gape at her while he wrenched off the black satin ribbon tie around his neck, tossing it haphazardly onto the desk behind him. She stood when Michael crossed the small distance that separated them, wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her into a warm embrace.

“How did you even get in here?”

Michael’s chin settled in the juncture between her neck and shoulder; he bent down a little to accommodate their height difference. His hair brushed the side of her face, his temple pressed to hers, the rich, earthy scent of him all around her. She leaned into Michael’s chest and his arms tightened around her like he didn’t want to let go. She didn’t mind in the least. She felt his deep exhale and tightened her hold, too, dragging her fingers through the curls that spilled over his collar.

She breathed in. _Home._

“I’ve been figuring things out on my own, since I don’t have some fancy school to teach me parlor tricks.”

“How’d you find me?” Michael released her from his embrace, but still held onto her, his long fingers around her upper arms. She was taken back by how much older he sounded, how he’d seemed to mature in their time apart.

“A feeling,” she told him. “I could sense where you were, somehow. Took a few tries to get it exactly right—I almost got caught by some students in the other corridor; this place is a damn maze—but the danger is always half the fun, isn’t it?” She laughed. Traveling via otherworldly power was trickier than she’d anticipated, especially over long distances. “You know, it’s kind of nice down here…if you like dungeons.”

“It’s not that bad,” Michael replied. “Is Ms. Mead all right? Are you okay?” Worry flickered in the blue of his eyes, his grip on her arms strengthening for a moment.

“We’re fine. She doesn’t know I’m here,” she assured. “I just…missed you.”

She’d had the company of Ms. Mead in the wake of his abrupt departure, of course, but the loneliness that had eaten away at her before she’d met Michael had started to rear its ugly head again. Her parents had drifted further away, which she’d been grateful for because it meant they’d given up the act of caring about what she did. Now, she stayed for days at time in Miriam’s house without consequence.

She had still felt lost, longing for his presence at her side. Just… _him_. Michael, the boy who’d befriended her like it’d been the easiest thing in the world, when no one else would. The weeks that they’d been apart were unbearably long and difficult. But it had also awakened more of her powers, even if it had been out of distraction.

“I mean, last time I saw you, the cops were putting you in handcuffs and shoving you into the back of their car.” She frowned and wrestled her arms from his hold. “That was over a _month_ ago, Michael.”

She declined to admit that she’d spent that night curled up in his bed alone, weeping until she’d given herself a headache, her mind concocting all the ways they would punish him for killing that butcher. She’d spent half the night believing they’d never see each other again and the other half devising escape plans. 

“And you thought, what? That I’d rot in a jail cell somewhere?”

He gave her an amused smirk, his eyes alight with mischief. But there was something else, too; a note of disbelief, maybe. A millisecond of that boy who’d faced nothing but betrayal and abandonment, astonished that she’d sought him out.

She smacked him across the chest. “I was worried.”

“Everything worked out fine.” He lifted his arms from his sides, gesturing to the sleek, monochromatic room that was now his.  

“Clearly,” she deadpanned. “Look, I know you’re busy, so I’ll—”

When she started to turn away, Michael grabbed her wrist gently, tugging her back toward him until he gathered her to his chest again. “Come here,” he said softly, and she relented into the warmth of his arms. One of his hands cradled the back of her head, which she’d tucked underneath his chin. “I’m sorry.” She wondered if she’d imagined the kiss he pressed into her hair. “I didn’t like leaving you that way, either. I’d _never_ abandon you willingly—you have to know that.”

“I do.”

“This is where I’m supposed to be for now,” Michael said. “I know it feels like we’re stronger together, but I also know you’re entirely capable of handling yourself on your own. And I need for you to trust me. The path is only going to get easier from here.”

She nodded, and picked her head up from his chest to look at him. There was a trace of a grin on her lips. “I can’t get over how different you are.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “I’m the same guy who almost made a roof collapse on the two of us,” he reasoned. “I haven’t changed _that_ much. My instructors nearly died of hypothermia the other day because lost control again.”

“You’re more confident, though.” She slid her arms around his middle. “Older, somehow.”

“My mission is clearer,” Michael acknowledged. “The warlocks have this prophecy. They think I’ll become their Alpha—that my power will make me Supreme so their coven will rise and they’ll no longer be second to the witches.” 

She scoffed. “Men.”

“They’ve called a meeting of their council,” he continued. “They want the current Supreme to administer the test of the Seven Wonders. These people…they’re the only threat to my father’s plans, but if I pass this test, they won’t be a problem.”

“Do you think she’ll allow it?”

Michael shook his head, and again she noticed that the tentative boy who’d peered over her aunt’s front gate was still in there, somewhere. “It’s going to take some convincing.”

“I’m impressed, honestly,” she said. “The warlocks are so caught up in some petty inter-coven drama that they don’t see who’s right in front of them. They’ve created their own mess for you to manipulate to your advantage. When I interviewed for the witch coven, I could barely get in the door.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He sighed.

“She couldn’t figure out what I was.”  

“And we don’t have the answer to that question, either,” Michael said, his brow furrowed. He rubbed absentminded circles across her back. “I wish I did. You deserve to know who you are.”

“Maybe I’ll ask your father someday.”

Michael tried for a crooked smirk, but she could see that like her, he was troubled by the answers they couldn’t find. “But she still sensed the darkness in you.”

“Well, you make a better warlock than my pathetic attempt at being a witch,” she assured him. “She might sense something different, but she won’t know who you are. And even if she did…there’s no way she’d survive you.”

She rose up on the tips of her toes and left a kiss on his cheek. “Good luck. Not that you’ll need it.”

And then she was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I had work to catch up on and then my will to write took a little hit after the finale. But, here's an extra long chapter that I hope you enjoy. It's an important one!

The Hotel Cortez had called to him. His father had reached out from the void to guide his path, and so he ended up on the doorstep of a hell mouth. It looked rather innocuous from the outside—a seedy, rundown Art Deco relic left to decompose in a back alley. An echo of its former grandeur. Michael supposed it had all of the right elements to act as a conduit for his father’s influence. That familiar rush of darkness ghosted along his skin before he even set foot in the lobby, coiling tightly around him as if it was oxygen to his starved lungs.

Michael breathed it in, greedy for it, confidence swelling in his veins, his hands flexing at his sides. Power hummed across his fingertips, burning as if he’d held them into an open flame. The only other time he had felt his father’s presence so close, so all-consuming was the night of the Black Mass, where he’d affirmed his title as Satan’s heir. A hint of brimstone caught his senses, just a trace of it when the air shifted as he walked through the vacant lobby.

He smirked, chin tilted up, and folded his hands behind his back. The tacky, stained carpet muted his footsteps. Around every turn the Cortez seemed endless and identical; doors stretching in every direction, the hallways casting more shadow than light. It was dim and outdated, gaudy in a way that made Michael’s skin itch.

Agony seeped from the walls. Souls cried out for mercy, for salvation they would never find. The screaming and wailing would never stop. They would never escape, never know peace.

Michael kept walking.

A melody broke through the deafening quiet, the distant weeping and torment. Michael paused in the middle of a hallway, head cocked to one side, brow knit together. Someone was whistling; the sound of a children’s lullaby floated into the hall from one of the rooms up ahead. A fragile, golden orange light spilled onto the carpet from an open door and flickered against the wall opposite like someone had lit a fire.

Michael hurried toward it, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. He stopped just short of the doorway, arms falling to his sides. His lips parted as his jaw dropped a little and he tried to register the sight in front of him.

This room was different from the others.

It was all dark walls and dark, rich wood and elegance—a study full of bookcases and glossy, modern furniture with a large fire burning at one end. Michael stepped over the threshold, pulled forward by some force or feeling inside of him. His ice blue gaze swept over the room, taking in little details like the arrangement of animal skulls on the mantle and the table against the far wall that displayed what he assumed was an expensive liquor collection.

He noticed the man last. Or maybe he hadn’t been there a moment ago. Michael didn’t know for certain.

The man rose from behind an ornate desk as if he’d been expecting Michael’s arrival. As if, somehow, they’d had an appointment.

He cut an imposing figure in a tailored, slate gray three-piece suit. There was a dusting of light gray at his temples, his hair the color of ink and slightly tousled. A handsome amount of stubble shadowed his jawline; Michael guessed that he was maybe in his late forties by some terrible estimation. There was something familiar about this man’s moss green eyes, the sharp slope of his nose, the knowing grin that pulled at a corner of his lips, but Michael couldn’t immediately place it. The silver chain of a pocket watch glinted in the firelight as the man stepped toward the far table.

“Hello, Michael.” His voice was smooth, accented. “Would you care for a drink?”

“Sure.” Michael remembered himself—the manners instilled in him by Constance Langdon were impossible to forget, even now—as he neared the man, his steps wary. “Thank you.”

Amber liquid flowed into two crystal glasses from an old bottle. Michael thought he saw a date on the label that suggested somewhere within the 1700s, but he couldn’t be sure, faded as the label was. The man handed one glass over to Michael before he picked up the other, letting it dangle between his fingertips for a moment. He then held it aloft between them, tipping it slightly. The firelight illuminated the amber in his glass and a small, silver ring that adorned the man’s thumb.

“To you, Michael Langdon,” he declared, “Long may you reign.”

He clinked his own glass against Michael’s, that meaningful—and perhaps proud—grin spreading across his lips.

The drink shot like fire down his throat and burned straight through his chest. He stifled a cough and took another sip. Michael had no idea what it was, but it sent an instantaneous, pleasant buzz to his fingertips and toes.

“You certainly are your father’s son,” the man told him. He spoke as if he’d known Michael for his entire life, known things about him that he’d yet to learn. The thought was a little unsettling. “What an honor it is to finally be in your presence at last.”

Michael cradled the glass between his palms. “I’m sorry,” he started, peering up at the man with a slight shake of his head, gaze narrowing in confusion. “Do I know you?”

“No, you wouldn’t. Our paths may have run parallel, you and I, but there was no reason for them to cross. Well, not until now, at least. You’re far too young, Michael, and I am something much more ancient.”

The man’s eyes suddenly turned from dark green to pure black, the whites of his eyes like twin smudges of charcoal. Michael had never seen anything like it before, but he understood. In his soul—the part of him bred for nothing but sin and chaos and destruction—he knew all too well what it meant. Michael’s chin rose, assessing, his small, weighty exhale audible between them.

“But,” the man continued, his eyes returning to their normal color as he looked at Michael over the rim of his glass. “You know someone who’s very dear to me. And it’s time that we met.”

 

***

 

Her room smelled of sandalwood and jasmine, like it always did. Although his visits to her home were far fewer than the time she spent at his, the scent always clung to her hair, lingered in his room and on his clothes. He’d grown used to it. It had become a constant in a life so full of sudden, irrevocable change. Michael had noticed it on the bedding in his room at Hawthorne and in the wake of her departure the other night. It stayed on his uniform the next day as they recited incantations, his thoughts pulled to her whenever a remnant of sandalwood and jasmine drifted into his senses.

Michael found himself disappointed, even lonely, when the scent finally faded.

He’d missed her, too.

In the beginning, it had been curiosity that had drawn Michael to her. He’d felt her power, that same intoxicating darkness that resided in his veins, before he’d even seen her. Now, it was something else entirely. Something he couldn’t even measure, let alone name. She never expected anything from him, and that’s what made her different from everyone else who circled around him.

They all trailed behind him, casting him as their leader—whether he had a say in the matter or not—and she always matched her steps with his, always gravitated to his side. His only friend. His equal. His partner, for whatever destiny demanded of them.

And now he understood why.

Michael stood like a silent shadow, the room dark around him except for the soft glow of the candles that scented the air. It was tidy, only because she’d spent so many hours locked away in here avoiding the chaos of her parents.

She cleaned when she was anxious, to quell the panic in her chest by keeping her hands busy, her mind preoccupied. Michael remembered the first time she’d seen the appalling state of his bedroom a week after they’d met outside her aunt’s house.

It had taken her seven days to show up at Ms. Mead’s door again, seven days to process the truth that she somehow knew had been there all along. Michael had watched her pace the room, afraid to look him in the eye, afraid to get too close, her hands frantic and her voice shaking as she asked him about everything except that book she’d let him borrow. Michael’s room was spotless by the time she accepted his answers and the burden that came with being in his orbit.

Michael had been charmed by it. By _her_.

That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Michael’s cloak rippled around his ankles, his steps quiet. His fingers skirted across the organized row of books on one of her shelves and paused at a silver frame sitting at the edge. He picked it up, thumb passing over the photograph inside: the two of them on Ms. Mead’s porch. They were sprawled over the front steps, his arm across her shoulders, both of her arms wrapped around his middle. She had her eyes closed—Michael grinned at the memory of tugging her into the frame, catching her by surprise—but her smile was bright, her face pressed into his side.

He hadn’t even looked at the camera. His attention was on her, that boyish face he could now barely recognize lit by a beaming smile. It all seemed so _normal_. So simple, then. Michael couldn’t help the involuntary pang of sadness that hit him in the gut out of nowhere; the nagging whisper that crept into his thoughts when he gave in to doubt. What if they had strayed off the path? Would fate still catch up to them?

He set the frame down and rounded the corner of her bed, sinking into the edge by her hip. The power he carried into the room with him hadn’t roused her. She was still asleep, curled up on her side, her lips parted slightly, her hair fanned out across the pillows. The book she’d been reading before she drifted off had slid out of her hands and onto the tangled up sheets next to her.

Michael had cared for— _loved_ —so few people in his short life who’d genuinely loved him in return. He almost wasn’t sure what it felt like. If it was real and honest. If he had the capacity for it, being who and what he was.

But _her_ … She made him believe in the possibility.

Inhaling the scent of sandalwood and jasmine, Michael reached out and stroked her hair gently. A few moments passed before she stirred with a soft groan, blinking up at him.

“Hi,” she rasped, her voice still thick with sleep.

Michael laughed. “Hey.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know.” He withdrew his hand, watching her gain her bearings as she sat up. “Late.”

Her eyes widened. “Look at you,” she gasped. Her fingers seized the fabric of his cloak. She ran her thumbs over the intricate silver clasps, admiring the detail before she became distracted by the new clothes he’d acquired. “Are capes regulation at Hawthorne now?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, so it’s just you,” she answered. Her smile was all sarcasm, betraying the look in her eyes. Michael couldn’t quite read it, but there was something in her gaze that seemed to soften his roughest edges, now more than ever. Something that kept him human. “Figures.”

She yawned and stretched like a cat, then gathered up the book that had tumbled into the bed sheets. Michael caught the gilded cover in the candlelight before she left it on the bedside table.

He lifted an eyebrow. “ _Paradise Lost_?”

“I was studying.”

Michael stared at her, a smirk forming on his mouth. “For class?”

She yawned again and tucked one leg under the other. He moved a little closer, and her fingers found their way back to his cloak. “Not exactly.”

Her eyes hadn’t left him since she woke up, her expression soft, her hair mussed from sleep. Michael always felt safe with her, comforted by having her beside him. Despite all his outbursts and dark impulses, he never wanted her to feel like how her parents made her feel when she was with him.

She reached out and kneaded her fingers into his hair. Michael leaned into her touch, his eyelids falling shut. He couldn’t stop the tiny sigh that escaped his lips as she massaged his scalp and played with strands of gold. “Your hair looks longer.”

“Does it?”

“Mmhmm,” she hummed. “You know, I should be used to all of this by now, but some of it is still so…surreal.”

Her thumb traced the mark behind his ear, a delicate, feather-light touch. Warmth blossomed up the back of his neck and the tips of his ears as if he’d just taken another sip of whatever drink he’d had at the Cortez.

“If I had hair as beautiful as yours, I’d let it grow out, too,” she mused. “Please don’t get any bright ideas if you’re ever bored at that school. Teenage boys can be insufferable and stupid—I can’t imagine how magic would factor into that equation in large groups.”

Michael opened his eyes. “Are you calling me insufferable?” He tilted his head, offering her an equally crooked grin.

She matched it. “Only sometimes.” She untangled her fingers from his hair and he found himself missing the warmth, the gentleness of her hands. “So, does this mean you’re taking the test? Because, I mean—no offense, I’m glad you’re making progress and everything—but this arrangement is shitty.”

He folded his hands over the one she’d buried in his cloak and she inched ever closer, her knee bumping into his thigh. He remembered a time when the barest of touches would make him flinch, but that fear had long since passed. “It won’t be for much longer,” Michael promised. “I had to persuade Cordelia—get her attention. I’ll take the test in two weeks’ time.”

“I can only imagine what you had to do to convince _her_.” 

“A grand gesture.” Michael kept his palm pressed to hers, brushing his fingertips across the small bones of her knuckles with his other hand. He dropped his eyes to their hands while he spoke. “Do you know anything about the Hotel Cortez?”

When he looked up again, she was shaking her head. “No. Why?”

“My father led me there,” Michael told her, finally lacing their fingers together, “and I met _your_ father.”

The storm of emotion on her face tore at him; bewilderment and shock and hurt clamored for space all at once. Her eyes were like glass, her fingers tightening around his as she took an uneven breath.

“No,” she answered. “My _father_ —Michael, whoever you met, it _can’t_ be—”

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Michael said. “Those questions you’ve always had about who you are…he can give you the answers. He’s your _true_ father, just as Satan is mine. He can help you understand your place in all of this.”

She sniffled, and a few tears glistened down her cheeks in the soft glow of the candles. “I’m someone else’s daughter,” she whispered. She recoiled and wrenched her hands away from his, tucking them into the long sleeves of her shirt as if the realization had scorched her flesh. “No wonder my mom’s so fucking afraid of me all the time. She _knew_ , didn’t she? They probably _both_ knew and that’s why—”

“Listen to me,” Michael told her, calm as he could manage, taking her tear-streaked face in his hands, “you don’t need them— _fuck_ them. They were never going to care about you—we were born to families who could never accept us. From here on out, it’s just you and me and Ms. Mead. You’re not going to be alone. All right?”

She nodded, and he leaned forward, his lips brushing the top of her head. A habit leftover from his grandma that he couldn’t quite break, though that connection had long since been lost. “Will you go with me?” She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “To meet him?”

Michael promised her that he would.

  

***

It had been five days since Michael had upended everything she thought she knew about herself. She realized quickly that she’d never really known anything at all. There had been a part of her, however small, that feared the truth as much as she’d been desperate for it. She was made of something sinister, the darkness guiding her power, whispering into her soul, her thoughts, her impulses. She’d been made to destroy, to desire chaos and fire and blood.

She had wanted to confront her mother about the truth, but instead she reined in the anger that simmered for days, fearful of exactly how it would manifest. They crossed paths so rarely now that it wouldn’t have mattered. She and her parents were nothing more than strangers to each other. Her mother, who hadn’t wanted to be a mother at all, and her father, who had stared into the eyes of someone else’s child for years and years, accepting her lie.

Michael had returned to Hawthorne and she ended up in Miriam’s kitchen, her haven in moments of personal crisis. She’d still been trembling from the news, her stare vacant, lightyears away, maybe in a different realm entirely. Miriam had praised Satan, breathless at the idea of having yet another connection to his inner circle within the walls of her home.

It was the first time since they’d met that she questioned Miriam’s care for her, and for Michael.

It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought.

Michael loved the woman fiercely, led by his need to be accepted, guided. It blinded him, and until then it had blinded her, too, as Miriam had tended to the wounds left by the people who were supposed to be her blood. Even the suggestion that Ms. Mead’s love was inspired by the power they held and Michael’s title, his power, and not just _him_ —the lost, motherless boy—made her stomach turn.

She couldn’t bear the thought. He’d shatter, and she didn’t want to be the one responsible for it.

She kept her mouth shut.

 

***

 

 _I’ll be right behind you_ , Michael promised, his voice resonating in her wake as she materialized in a dimly lit hallway. _He wants to see you first._

There was something about the Hotel Cortez that made her skin crawl.

She supposed it was a visceral, human reaction to the sounds that traveled through the walls, the shadows that darted around corners. She padded down a long hallway, the heels of her boots shuffling on the patterned carpet, the hem of her black dress trailing behind her. Miriam had taken her shopping for the occasion, insisting that jeans wouldn’t be proper for such an important meeting. She’d had to agree, and since Michael was now dressing the part, she figured it was only right that she would do the same. It was a simple dress, but sophisticated; slightly shorter in the front than in the back and sleeveless. She’d slipped a black leather jacket over it, which paired well with her vintage-style Victorian boots.

The screaming in the walls became unbearable. Her stomach twisted in knots as the voices pressed in from all sides. Underneath all of that, she felt something else, ethereal and strong, winding around her. It was dizzying, overwhelming, swelling like a wave. She let it in, led forward by it, the darkness reaching out to whisper in her ear. It was louder in here than it ever had been in her life.

She’d never felt confidence like this before. Strength. Power. Raw and unmatched and hers to claim.

A haunting children’s lullaby pierced the silence. There were no words, but she knew the melody being whistled as if she’d dreamed of it before. As if it had unlocked a memory somewhere that she’d forgotten.

There was a door open at the end of the hall, golden light beckoning her to step inside. She followed it like a moth to a flame, the answers she’d always sought just within reach. The whistling stopped when she crossed the threshold into a study, books with their shining titles winking at her from several tall bookcases, black paneled walls somehow warm and inviting. Gold flittered across sleek pieces of furniture and made the room several degrees hotter than the hallway had been.

A man leaned against a wide, polished desk, dark green eyes sparkling in the firelight. The same dark green of her own eyes, she realized, in the moment that suspended between her and this man. Her and her _father_.

He didn’t look anywhere near as ominous as she’d envisioned—her nightmares had come with claws and talons and all sorts of demonic imagery—but maybe he kept that part hidden. He wore deep gray, this man who looked so much like her; a starched button down shirt paired with a waistcoat and tie. His coat had been draped across the desk behind him, his hands planted on either side, fingers curled around the edge of the desk. She noticed he’d gone gray at the temples, his hair a few shades darker than her own. But they had the same nose, the same curve in their lips.

Her legs trembled, so she took her steps slow. She wondered if he could hear the panicked beat of her pulse. A gentle smile tugged at his mouth, far softer than anything she could’ve imagined. He pushed off the edge of the desk and moved toward her. She watched, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, as he folded his arms around her.

“My beautiful baby girl,” he said, and she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react to that. She wasn’t sure how he _expected_ her to react. Her father, so inhuman yet wearing such a kind face. A stranger in her life, too. But one she was anxious to know. “Welcome home.”

She let him embrace her, thankful that it only lasted a few moments because she didn’t return it. He held her at arm’s length, apparently unperturbed by her coldness, dark gaze sweeping over her. She tried to make sense of how her life had become this. It had always been this, really; she was just waking up to it.

Coming home.

“I apologize for my absence in your life, and for leaving you with those wretched people.” He had an accent that she couldn’t immediately place, but it was polished and melodic. “My distance was warranted, I assure you, though it may not seem fair to you. Your mother was not always so indifferent toward you, either, but sadly that’s in the past.”

“Did she know about you?”

“No.” He let go of her arms and she shifted on her feet, putting space between them. “Not immediately, at least. When we met here at the Cortez all those years ago, she assumed I was just like her. A stranger passing through; maybe a little lonely and desperate. Our connection was fleeting—nothing more than simple lust after one too many drinks.”

“And then she found out she was pregnant,” she finished.

He hummed by way of confirmation. “She only began to suspect something was amiss when I came to see you in the hospital the night you were born,” he explained. “She’d never told me she was with child, but of course I knew. It was my job to know.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

The implication that some demon had knocked up her mother, that her existence had been planned without her mother being aware, hit a raw nerve. She may have resented the woman who’d given birth to her, but no one deserved that. It wasn’t quite as horrific as Michael’s conception, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth.

“My dear girl, you were brought into this world with a _purpose_ ,” he told her. “There are countless legions who serve Michael’s father, yet I am fortunate enough to be among the chosen few that he holds in highest regard, to govern them. As you can well imagine, this requires a certain level of trust…and responsibility.”

He took up his spot in front of the desk, leaning against it. She was grateful to have room to breathe, to process. “It’s your _birthright_ —you’re meant to lead armies raised from Hell itself and see this world become nothing but fire and ruin. To stand at Michael’s side and rebuild a new world in his father’s image. You have power within you that you’ve only just begun to understand. You’re a _leader_ , my darling girl. A warrior forged in hellfire.”

“We were always meant to find each other.” She knew that already. She’d felt it so deeply in her soul. “Still, that’s a lot of legacy to push onto someone. Not just me, but Michael, too.”

“You were born for it. The both of you,” he said, as if it was an acceptable explanation.

Where she had wanted to find some sense of identity in his words, something that would make her whole, the truth just left her hollow. Did he love her, this man? Were demons capable of love?

“I wanted the connection between the two of you to form on its own, with as little outside influence as possible. But I admit, I never anticipated just how strong it would be. He cares a great deal for you—Michael. Considers you his equal, his partner in all things. It’s a great honor. You’ve made me proud.”

“We’re human,” she challenged, not taking the bait of his praise. “Maybe you forgot that part: our human mothers.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and elected to ignore the venom lacing her words. “You mean the mother who wanted to murder him in his sleep?” he countered. “And as for _your_ mother…well, I don’t believe I have to remind you of her own failings.” He sighed as if he’d grown exhausted by her stubbornness. “Your humanity will always be a weakness, but it’s something that can be overcome.”

“I don’t see it as a weakness.” She dared a step closer for the first time, her eyebrows pulled together as she frowned.

He waved a hand. “Agree to disagree, then, I suppose. It does complicate things a fair bit, all of those messy human emotions.”

“It’s shit sometimes,” she conceded, “but those messy human emotions are why Michael and I are so close, you know.”

“I’m afraid you’re trying to explain a concept with which I’ve never understood,” he relented. “I am not duty-bound to govern whatever emotions you may or may not have,” he told her, annoyance clear in his tone. “I’m concerned with the power that lies in your veins, my dear girl. You’ve been summoned here not just because I wished for us to meet, but because it’s time for you to realize your full potential.”  

His eyes lifted to the doorway behind her, and she turned halfway to see Michael there, dressed just as he’d been the other night when he had visited her. He took long, graceful strides to get to her side, his cloak billowing around his legs. Relief flooded her chest, the anxiety and remnants of whatever frustration she’d directed at her father ebbing away once she felt Michael’s arm brush against hers. It must’ve not left her expression entirely, though, because the grin on Michael’s lips faded.

“Are you all right?” Michael wanted to know. Her father paid no mind, circling around the desk to rummage in the drawers.

She sighed and let her knuckles ghost along his. “I don’t know.”

“How fortuitous that you’ve joined us, Michael.” Her father straightened up, and she caught the glint of cold metal in his palm. She immediately tensed at the sight of the knife as her father approached. “I was about to summon you myself.”

Michael’s pale gaze fell to the knife, too, eyes wide with a note of panic. She leaned into Michael’s shoulder and his fingertips laced with hers for just a second, a touch of reassurance. “What’s this about?”

“The night you were born, I put a leash on your power,” her father said. “Once we undo it—and we’ll need Michael’s help for this—they will grow stronger over time. And Michael, this ritual is meant to bind the two of you together. Her power will never eclipse yours—”

“That wouldn’t matter to me,” Michael said.

“In any case, the binding will forever link her power to yours,” her father finished. His gaze turned to her. “You’ve felt it before, haven’t you, then? How your power fortifies in his presence?” She nodded. “This ritual will make that work for both of you, like a well from which you will be able to draw from.”

“And what if we don’t want that? Or…any of this?” she asked, her throat dry, voice suddenly rough.

“You say that as if you think you still have a choice.” Her father laughed, a low and somewhat derisive sound.

She glanced up at Michael and recognized the flash of doubt in his expression, the conflict beneath whatever confidence he’d gained over the last few weeks. It was still there, even if he didn’t say a word. His gaze flickered down to her own and he seemed to understand what she already knew. _We’re trapped._

Their lives had been planned before either of them had been conceived, and now it felt like there was no escape, no way to turn back. She shuddered to think of the consequences if they even made the attempt. The idea of Michael’s birthright had always seemed so abstract that she never really grasped the consequences of it being brought into fruition. And now that her own legacy was entwined with his, it all seemed too real, moving far too quickly for her to catch up.

Turning the world into fire and ash had felt like the only option when all she had was anger in her blood, when the world had been nothing but cold and unkind to the two of them. But now that they had each other, did she really want this? Did Michael?

But neither of them had a say in what they wanted. They never did.

“Oh, come now,” her father chided. They watched him gather several candles from a table between two couches. He set them up in a wide circle in the middle of the room, their off-white color stark against the glossy black hardwood floor. “It’s not all bad, I assure you. Power beyond your wildest comprehension, anything you could ever wish for. The world laid out at your feet, yours to rule and reconstruct however you see fit. I could think of worse destinies, darling.”

Once the candles had been laid out, he passed a hand over them, igniting the wicks all at once with a quiet gust of power. “Dreadfully human,” he grumbled. “The both of you.” Michael’s eyes found hers again as he inhaled a deep breath. She felt his fingers slip between hers and held on tightly, her stomach coiling into a knot again. “Time to cast aside whatever reservations you may have—whether you want to or not. You’re both here because Satan commands it. And you would do well to remember that he’s not one to cross.”  

He rolled up one of his sleeves to the elbow, then pressed the tip of the blade into his flesh, dragging a line up the inside of his arm. Crimson ran in steady beads downward, droplets raining onto the floor. He lowered into a crouch, working quietly and efficiently with a precision that she assumed had been acquired through practice. As she and Michael stepped closer, they saw the inverted pentagram mapped out on the floor inside the circle of candles.

Her father pulled himself back up to his full height. “Remove your jackets and shoes,” he instructed. “Then I’ll need you both to stand inside the circle.”

There was rustling of fabric as they tugged off layers, not a word spoken between them. Michael draped his cloak and jacket over the back of a chair, and she tossed her own leather jacket on top. She had to sit down to get off her boots—too many laces to untie—and by the time she’d done so, Michael had already dropped his shoes and socks onto the floor. He reached for her hand again, like it was a lifeline, an anchor, and she twined their fingers together, grateful for it. Her hands were already slippery with sweat, but Michael didn’t seem to mind, his grip around her fingers so fierce that she thought their hands might go numb. He was afraid, underneath that stoic, calm façade. He wouldn’t say it, but she could feel it.

Barefoot, they stepped into the circle and stood across from one another with only a few inches between them. The blood had already dried on the floor, but the sensation was still odd beneath her toes.

Her father stood outside the circle, brandishing the knife. “Roll up your sleeves, Michael,” he said.

Michael did so, exposing the pale flesh of his forearms. Her father passed the knife to her, and her breath caught at the weight of it in her hands. Not that it was heavy, but having control of it made a cold sweat break out across her skin. It was a strange knife, the hilt black and inlaid with gold markings that must’ve held some significance.

“You saw what I did to make the pentagram, yes? Cut identical lines into Michael’s arms, and he’ll do the same to you.”

Michael held out his arms, his hands clenched into fists. She rested the edge of the blade on skin just below his elbow, but hesitated. Her eyes flickered up to his, so translucent in the low light of the candles.

“It’s okay,” Michael said softly. “I trust you.”

Blood bubbled up from the edge of the knife, a dark red line from elbow to wrist. He sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring at the pain. She repeated the motion on his other arm before she could think too much about it, then passed the knife over to him. Michael’s fingers had already run with scarlet, his grasp slick around the hilt of the knife. His blood was warm on her skin, the back of her wrist cradled gently in his palm while he traced up her arm. She wasn’t as quiet as he had been, letting out a whispered groan at the burning sting that now traveled up both arms.

“Now,” her father took the knife from Michael, “take each other’s hands.”

They wove their fingers together, so coated in red, dripping onto their toes, that she couldn’t tell what blood belonged to her or Michael. The air was tinged with it, the heat in the room making the scent of iron potent. Ribbons of scarlet run down their arms like rain on a window, and she found herself both mesmerized and a little light headed.

Her father paced around them outside the circle, chanting in a low voice. The flames of the candles danced in his wake, the temperature in the room climbing. She couldn’t have imagined it—she saw the sweat beading on Michael’s temple and felt her dress sticking to the small of her back. Her father continued to speak in a language she couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t Latin; she would’ve recognized Latin, since Ms. Mead had been adamant about the two of them being fluent in it. It sounded like something ancient. An archaic tongue that accompanied images of hellfire and the odor of brimstone.

She gripped Michael’s hands tighter, the coating of blood making her skin grimy and taut. Her knees wobbled a little, the heat in the room squeezing the air out of her lungs. It felt like she was traveling away from her body; if it wasn’t for Michael’s fingers wrapped around her own, she thought she might’ve sunk into the floor.

The influx of power made the candles flicker dangerously. She could feel it, the darkness. Swirling around them in long, endless tendrils, that familiar whisper in her ear. It dragged her under and took root in her soul—and something finally shattered inside her. Something long buried, with claws and sharp teeth and an appetite for destruction. The explosion of power made her drop to her knees, gasping, crying out, overcome with the burden. It was dark, ancient, indescribable…and it scared her, as much as the thrill of it ignited her veins.

Michael had collapsed to his knees in front of her, still holding securely to her hands—her fingers had gone numb and she was sure that his had, too. Blood continued to pool on the on the polished wood and splattered on their clothes. Michael’s cheeks were wet with tears, his head drooping toward the floor so all she saw was a mop of golden curls. The well had been opened, power flowing between both of them unrestrained, stirring up a phantom wind that threatened to extinguish the candles. She thought that maybe the two of them would lose consciousness from the sheer force of it.

When Michael found her again, his eyes were black—that bright blue edged out completely by the darkness. She wondered if her eyes looked the same. She could almost feel it.

Her father grinned, standing over them. “ _Ave Satanas_.”

The candles went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The protagonist’s father isn’t an existing character from Hotel or anywhere in AHS. He’s a high-ranking demon (somewhat based on the demon Paimon) who lives at the Cortez.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm REALLY sorry for the long wait on this chapter. I had a lot going on and also fought through some writer's block, so I apologize for leaving you all hanging for months. Hopefully this chapter makes up for the wait!! Thank you all for your patience and for supporting this story! Your comments and kudos are much appreciated. :)

The blood ritual at the Cortez had left her physically and emotionally drained—Michael had guided her home, both of them tripping on unsteady legs, their bodies heavy like they’d been weighed down with stones, feeling an exhaustion they couldn’t quite name. She hadn’t wanted to be alone, then. She didn’t know what to feel, how something could make her both so whole and powerful and yet so empty. Michael had been hesitant to leave her side, and she hadn’t even asked him to stay. He just knew.

“Don’t you need to get back to Hawthorne?” She peered up at Michael from where she’d curled around her pillow, watching him undo the elegant silver clasp of his cape. There were shadows under his eyes; he dragged a hand down his face, shoulders drooping as he let out a sigh. He looked as tired as she felt.

Michael left his cape across the chair in the far corner of her bedroom and went around to the other side of the bed, slipping off his shoes before he settled next to her. A moment later, the warmth of his presence lapped along her spine, his arm draped over her waist, tugging her into his chest. She dragged one of her arms out from under the pillow and laced her fingers between his, her thumb wandering over his knuckles and up his wrist. She felt Michael’s fatigued exhale against her back, the slightly anxious rhythm of his pulse against her fingers. He didn’t want to talk about it, but the ritual had left him shaken, too.

This time, she was absolutely certain that he’d pressed a kiss into her hair. “The only place I’m needed is right here.”

Her eyes fluttered closed. A few stray tears spilled down her cheeks and she tasted the salt on her lips. “I don’t want to get you into trouble, not so close to the test.”

Michael burrowed his face into the back of her shoulder, lithe fingers threading through her hair. She could fall asleep under the spell of his gentle hands. She had, before, many times over the course of their relationship. He pulled her closer, the warmth of his fingertips spreading across her hip. The scent of candle smoke and iron and whatever strong drink her father had shared at the Cortez lingered in her nose. The faint trace of sandalwood and jasmine that usually hung in her bedroom wasn’t powerful enough to suppress the echoes of their blood ritual.

“That doesn’t matter.” There was another deep exhale, but his pulse had slowed somewhat.

“Michael—”

“They won’t question my absence,” his voice was low, muffled into her shoulder. “And you’re far too important to me.” Michael’s fingers tightened around hers, and for a moment, if she closed her eyes, it seemed like they were just two kids in his bedroom with the rain tapping against the window. But she couldn’t pretend, couldn’t hold onto that illusion if she’d wanted to. Too much had changed since then.

Her lower lip trembled and made her voice shake. “I’m scared,” she confessed. “I’ve never been afraid like this before. Of…what we’re supposed to be doing. Of—”

“Afraid of _me_ ,” Michael murmured against her shoulder. It was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear it, but when she did, it was as if that damned ritual knife had torn right through her chest and stabbed her heart. She hadn’t missed the hitch in his breath, the tremor in his words.

“No.” She squeezed his hand, her fingers cold and numb from the lingering anxiety compared to his. “Never you.”

“If I had known about the ritual…”

“It’s not your fault,” she assured, softly. “I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that alone. It’s just…this is a lot to be okay with in such a short amount of time.”

She knew that the ritual would change her irrevocably, and it had, just not the way she’d envisioned. Maybe she’d been stupid to think that her immediate future would involve a lot more fire and brimstone, that maybe those pitch black eyes staring back at her would be permanent. She hadn’t recognized her own reflection in her father’s study, and she’d only seen Michael like that for a fleeting moment the night they’d burned down her aunt’s house. She’d always known there was something dark in her soul, but the knowledge that she wasn’t fully human—and half- _demon_ , no less—had left her reeling.

“None of this has been easy for you.”

He shifted slightly, his chin digging into the crook of her shoulder, soft curls brushing the side of her neck and ear. The low rumble of his words resonated into her back, and that made her feel warmer and more whole than anything her father could’ve told her about where she’d come from.

“But there’s no one else,” He sounded so quiet and more terrified than he’d ever admit, that confident façade left behind at the doors to the Hawthorne School. This was the boy who’d always shared the truth with her and feared it leave him abandoned yet again. “I wouldn’t choose anyone except you to stand at my side in all of this. I don’t _want_ anyone else.”

“I’m right here,” she whispered back to him. “I told you I’m not going anywhere. I promised you that.”

A promise was a promise. She had no intention of breaking it or leaving Michael’s side when there was nowhere else she’d belong. The fact was, neither of them could do this alone, and neither of them wanted to. They had little choice but shoulder the burden of their birthright together. And carry on.

 

***

Michael returned to Hawthorne in anticipation of completing the test of the Seven Wonders, and she went back to her mundane life of homework and avoiding her parents, a little envious of Michael’s unconventional education. She also hated being apart from him. But separated as they were, the increase in the strength of their combined power was almost immediately perceptible.

There had always been this invisible thread between them, a tether in the darkness, but now it had become more resilient, connecting them across great distances. A current of energy that let them know where the other was, and that they were forever bound. It was a comfort to her; gentle, whereas everything else about her newfound power was unwieldy and prone to give her headaches. Her father had unleashed Hell within her and hadn’t exactly given her any guidance on how to tame it for good use.

She hadn’t seen him since the Cortez and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to.

On the eve of the test, Miriam told her they had an errand to run for Michael. She’d been sitting at their tiny kitchen table, her fist propped under her chin, paging through the Book of Revelation. As if it would answer some things beneath all of that flowery language and prophecy. It certainly didn’t do a damn thing to ease the internal panic she’d concealed after her father had declared that she was supposed to be some kind of leader. Of _legions_. A soldier of the apocalypse she’d help create. Her father had had millennia to earn whatever rank he currently held, she was sure, and she was just a human with some demon blood whose primary concern right now was getting into the college of her choice.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she slid into the passenger seat of Miriam’s car.

It was late, nearing midnight, and she wondered what sort of errand they could’ve possibly needed to run at this hour. It definitely wasn’t just a drive up to the corner store. Late night trips in the Mead household usually entailed rituals of whispered Latin and sacrificial blood in some unfortunate soul’s backyard.

Miriam shoved the key into the ignition. “It’s best if you don’t ask a lot of questions. The less you know, the better.”

They meandered through empty back roads under a clear night sky, following a trail that Miriam apparently had picked up. She kept the window rolled down a little to let in the chilly air tinged with the scent of fresh cut grass and damp earth. It had rained sometime during the day; the headlights reflected off the slick asphalt and puddles still gathered in the roads as they broke through the shadows of the trees.

With the radio droning on softly in the background, and her attention out the window, her mind miles away, she nearly drifted off to sleep. The car slowed, gravel crackling under the wheels, when they inched closer to a gas station. It was bright, set deep into the wilderness without another soul around. Except for the car that had just pulled in.

“Get out,” Miriam whispered.

“What? _Why_?”

Miriam shot her a stern look, lips curving into a frown. The blinding white light from the gas station made her jet black hair look glossy. “Didn’t I tell you not to ask questions? Now, stay close, but stick to the shadows until I call for you. If for some reason this goes sideways, take the car and meet Michael outside Hawthorne. Last thing we need is for you to get yourself killed by a damn warlock.” Miriam reached over to the glove box and emerged with a kerchief, which she wrapped around her head and tied beneath her chin.

Her eyes went wide, her hand stilled on the door handle. “Wait, _warlock_? But—”

“Don’t you start. Go on, _get_.”

“Why don’t you just let me take care of it?” Her fingers curled around the handle, but she’d yet to make any real effort to budge the door open.

“With the way your powers have been acting? You set my curtains on fire two days ago.” In the dark of the car’s interior, Miriam’s eyebrow rose. She pursed her lips, and the glint in her eyes turned into something more sincere. “No, I can handle this. I’ve gotta protect my Devil babies.”

She had seriously misjudged Ms. Miriam Mead.

Hidden by the night that had enveloped the woods, she waited near the tree line with a clear view of Miriam’s car. A man was already leaning against the side of his own car at one of the pumps, arms crossed over his chest, when Miriam pulled up. From this distance, she couldn’t really see anything but his dark hair and sharp clothes and a distinct swagger. A warlock, Miriam had said. She wasn’t sure what his problem was, but if it was enough to have them out here in the middle of the night committing murder, then she guessed it had to be pretty fucking important.

Miriam engaged the warlock in some small talk, and he obliged to help her with putting gas into her car. She couldn’t hear the echoes of their conversation from so far across the road, but she knew Miriam had a disarming way of playing the part when she needed to. She waited, holding her breath, for a sign of a struggle. It didn’t come. Distracted, the warlock never saw Miriam take a swipe at his ankles until it was too late.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

The warlock collapsed onto the asphalt, a cry ricocheting off the trees. It would be a mess, she mused, even if she couldn’t see the way the blood had exploded from his broken flesh. Once the warlock was vulnerable, on his knees, crashing toward the ground, Miriam sliced the fragile skin of his throat. And she took that as her cue to break through the tree line, fists stuffed into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt as she dashed across the empty road.

Miriam exhaled a long-suffering noise when she reached her side. “What’d I tell you about staying put? That damned ritual give you selective hearing or something?”

She pushed up the hood of her sweatshirt. “Who was he?”

The warlock lay at their feet in a pool of crimson, polished black like ink on the pavement. There was still a weak gurgling sound as he choked on his own blood, his clothes stained with it, his handsome face coated with the spray from his neck. He stared up at nothing, pale blue eyes unseeing and lifeless.

“A threat.” Miriam pulled a box of matches from an inside pocket of her coat. “You go get in the car and I’ll clean up the mess.”

“I’m perfectly capable of cleaning up a mess,” she said. “You don’t have to do all the heavy lifting, you know.”

She held her hand out over the warlock’s body with her palm facing downward. Miriam’s hand shot out and smacked hers away, and she tried to level Miriam with a glare, her mouth opened in annoyed silence.

“At a _gas station_? Are you crazy?” Miriam whispered, though her voice wanted to edge into a shout. “None of this’ll matter if you blow both of us to pieces trying to _clean up_.”

“Thanks for your confidence.” She lifted an eyebrow.

“We don’t have time to—”

Before Miriam could protest any further, she held her hands over the warlock’s dead body where the blood was beginning to run into the puddles left from the rain. She drew from the well that had been offered to her, from the ancient, dark power that had coursed through her veins since her birth. The rush was enough to make her sway a little on her feet, but she kept a tight hold on it, willing it to manifest where she needed it. Her control was shaky at best, but she focused, directing just the right amount that hopefully would do the job and leave her and Miriam unharmed in the process.

Flames sprung up from the pavement around the warlock’s body, licking at his clothes until they ignited. The heat of the fire drifted upward to meet her outstretched palms, the orange glow tossing deep shadows across their faces. The barest trace of sulfur cut through the scent of blood and damp earth.

She felt Miriam’s hand on the small of her back. “Let’s go.” When she tore her eyes away from the body burning at their feet, Miriam was grinning. “Michael will be expecting us.”

 

***

Days later, there was an ache deep in her chest that she couldn’t explain. The acceptance letter that her parents barely acknowledged—even though they insisted on a university education with their newfound wealth; she wasn’t stupid, it was just means to get her out of their way—sat neglected in her bedroom. The ache evolved into a sharp pain, wrapping itself around her ribcage with claws and teeth and a strong, unbearable feeling that something was horribly wrong.

As much as she didn’t want to, she stifled the impulse to show up at Hawthorne. If she got herself caught, she knew it would only make the situation worse. Michael had already conquered the Seven Wonders with little difficulty. But her gut feelings were seldom incorrect. Something had happened. Every frantic call to Miriam’s house phone went unanswered, and her cell phone brought her straight to voicemail. She left a few panicked, slightly breathless messages before she finally pulled on a jacket and materialized outside of the house she’d come to consider more of a home than anywhere else in her life.

A home that was dark and unoccupied.

Streetlights filled the empty driveway with a dim orange glow. Her eyebrows pulled together, considering the darkened windows as she rounded the corner to the side doors. She tugged on a handle and found it locked, a realization that made the pain in her chest flare like a piercing stab wound. It would be no use to venture inside. Miriam wasn’t here, and it looked as though the house had been like this for some time. The radio silence from Miriam made her think the worst—she would never just disappear like this, never be so out of touch. The chances of her skipping town were unlikely, but she refused to dwell on the grimmest of all the possible outcomes. She felt guilty enough for not getting here sooner, for not knowing how to translate the dread that had coiled around her insides. For doubting Miriam’s care and love for both her and Michael. All of this power at her disposal and she had no idea how to use it to help the situation or follow Miriam’s trail. What good was she, then? It didn’t make her some great leader of prophecy, it just made her goddamn useless.

Maybe she would have to sneak into Hawthorne, after all.

She stuffed her hands into her pockets, exhaling loudly, tears welling in her eyes, wondering if the dread inside her was something more profound, like grief.

A shape caught her periphery, a familiar ripple of power and light hitting her senses. She didn’t realize it was magic until it was too late.

The darkness swallowed her whole.

 

***

Four days.

Michael had stayed in this pentagram for four agonizing days, watching the sunlight move across the trees. Time seemed to slow down around him. He never counted the hours, left at the mercy of the passing sun overhead and the long shadows in the dirt. Except for the occasional birdsong and the rustle of leaves, there had been silence. Frustrating, resounding silence.

There was no one left. A hollow ache settled in his bones and gnawed at him with more violence than the hunger and thirst. His father had abandoned him, presumably because he’d already failed at the one thing he’d been put on this earth to do. He’d lost sight of his path and was now stumbling around in the dark once again, grasping at nothing. What was the point, now?

The acrid scent of burning flesh still clung to his nose like a ghost, his mind plagued by the images of his Ms. Mead charred beyond recognition. The grief that Michael could barely process since he’d dropped to his knees in this circle had numbed him; it came and went like the tide, stronger when the sun dipped below the horizon and the night’s quiet seemed more crushing. Sometimes, it had been accompanied by a fiery rage that he couldn’t contain, that left him exhausted from screaming into the forest until it felt as if he’d swallowed broken glass. In the moments when his fingertips had hovered over the burnt bodies, Michael thought that he’d lost them both to the witches.

And maybe he had. But they hadn’t set fire to _her_.

Four days and he couldn’t feel any sign of her. It was like the tether that bound them had inexplicably snapped, snuffing out the light that had helped to guide his path. Michael knew what her power was like, knew what it did when it mingled with his even when they were apart. The loss of her power was the least of his concerns, though—it was the absence of _her_ that made his soul feel incomplete.

She was just… _gone_.

When he’d asked Cordelia Goode where she was, Michael had noticed the glint in her eye of an answer that she would not give. Whatever the witches had done, it had concealed her from him.

He was alone.

Michael knelt in the dirt, the clear, earthy scent of the forest unable to scrub away the odor of scorched flesh. He hunched over, elbows resting on top of his thighs with his face buried in his hands. The once carefully parted hair underneath his dirt-streaked fingers had become a greasy, unkempt mess. Stubble along his jawline prickled at his hands as he dragged them across his face to wipe away the fatigue. Michael’s formerly pristine clothes were now ragged and caked in filth, his appearance a testament to the past four days of aimless waiting.

A low, waning sun spilled golden rays over the dirt and stung at his tired and bloodshot eyes. Four days of catching a few minutes’ worth of sleep wherever he could manage them had done terrible things to his mind. The world spun around his head, in and out of focus. Michael could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t. Had it _really_ been just four days? How long would it take for him to waste away in this forest?

Michael’s fingers itched to conjure his knife. It was tempting—the thought of the blade kissing his skin so he could finally be at peace.

“Michael.”

He knew that voice. He’d know it anywhere.

The sound of it filled the air like a melody to his heavy, aching head, and he lifted his face from his palms in response, those dark and violent thoughts withering away with the breeze. There was something wrong in her voice, a dissonant note that made his blood run cold. When he finally turned around, the streaks of daylight, now burning orange as if it was fire across the dirt, caught the highlights in her dark hair and beads of scarlet running down her ashen lips.

“You left me.” Tears mingled with the blood dripping from her chin. Michael saw her hand clutched against her chest, the dirt at her feet pooling with deep crimson from a wound he couldn’t find, her fingers slick with bright red. “After everything,” her breath shuddered, gasping, “why would you leave me? How could you let them kill me?”

She staggered forward, approaching the circle. How had she found him, when he hadn’t even felt her presence in days? Michael caught her once her knees gave out, cradling her in his arms, fingers raking through her hair. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, trying to find the source of all the blood.

A tear slipped down the curve of his cheek just when he thought he’d had no more left in him.

“I never wanted this to happen.” Michael desperately searched for a wound that wasn’t there, a wound that he didn’t think he would be powerful enough to heal. Not yet, anyway. He tried to temper his sorrow with anger instead, but the pain burned white-hot through his chest as if he could feel her wound as his own. “We’ll kill them all, I swear it. They won’t get away with what they’ve done to you and our Ms. Mead. They won’t survive us, I promise you that.”

She reached up and touched her fingertips to his cheek, leaving bloody fingerprints behind. She was so pale, the scent of blood all around them, the warmth retreating from her even as he held her close.

“Michael,” she whispered again.

“It’s all my fault.” A trembling hand cradled her ashen face. “I…I failed you, too.”

An apology wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough for the feeling that carved its way through his ribcage like cold steel. Was there a name for it, the pain of having part of your soul ripped from you? A word for an emotion stronger than _grief_?

Michael gathered her to his chest when he felt her go still, his tears falling into her hair. “Don’t leave me like this… _please_ …you’re all I have left…” He let her go to trace the fragile skin of her throat with his unsteady fingers. Her skin was cold to the touch, and no matter how hard he tried, he could no longer feel the once steady, strong rhythm of her pulse. She lay across his bent knees, unmoving, while he leaned over her.

Michael sobbed and pressed his forehead to hers. “I can’t lose you.”

He held her, dragging his fingers through her hair and sobbing her name until the illusion finally broke—her lifeless body vanishing in the next instant. The last of Michael’s sobs faded and he lifted his tear-stained face from his now empty hands.

All of it had seemed so frighteningly real— _she_ had felt so real.

But it was just another cruel trick.  

_Where are you?_


End file.
